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Personally healthcare is very beneficial. No one can prepare for an accident, if you get sick, or anything else. So it's very beneficial to have healthcare because no one can prepare for the unexpected. https://www.healthcare.gov/blog/benefits-of-health-insurance-through-marketplace/

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gun control would be useless because people are always gonna find their way around the law.  although we do need to calm down with how freely people use them.  rather its an accident or on purpose too many people are dying and these deaths consisted of 11,208 homicides, 21,175 suicides, 505 deaths due to accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, and 281 deaths due to firearms use with "undetermined intent". The ownership and control of guns are among the most widely debated issues in the country.

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gun control would be useless because people are always gonna find their way around the law.  although we do need to calm down with how freely people use them.  rather its an accident or on purpose too many people are dying and these deaths consisted of 11,208 homicides, 21,175 suicides, 505 deaths due to accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, and 281 deaths due to firearms use with "undetermined intent". The ownership and control of guns are among the most widely debated issues in the country.

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To be honest gun control wont stop nothing at all , so many people got guns already and its gone be hard to go to every household and take all the guns from them. Its the people choice to fire there guns at people.

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Animal testing is wrong and should be illegal and the people should be in jail.......

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Honestly I don't think stricter gun laws would really stop anything  happening because even the most mature person can decide one day they want to open fire on someone or in someplace, but I do believe mental illness screenings would help.  Like in the  Florida shooting the shooter had may discipline offenses from school and the local police, and had a mental illness.  He was still able to purchase a gun the legal way after all this.https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/timeline-parkland-shooter-nikolas-cruz/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.11382822dcd0

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Children should have vaccines, period. It can protect your child from the germs around, if done correctly. Now, come people argue that it gives the children who got vaccines autism, but this is actually outdated research from scientist, who said that their research was false about ten years later. And vaccines aren't just for the child, it's for the people around them. SOme people have weak immune systems and others are old or young and don't have much immune system build up due to age. So, in the end, vaccines are healthy for all persons e

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National Anthem protests should not be happening because it makes our country look bad and don't show our flag the pride it deserves.

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We should have tougher gun control laws.

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, responding to this past weekend's March For Our Lives events across the nation, is proposing what some might call a radical solution to prevent further gun violence - repealing the Second Amendment.

In an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times, the 97-year-old Stevens writes that a constitutional amendment "to get rid of" the Second Amendment "would do more to weaken the N.R.A.'s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option."

The Second Amendment states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Stevens called that concern "a relic of the 18th century" and says repealing it would eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States.

Stevens, who retired from the court in 2010, had two years earlier dissented in District of Columbia v. Heller, which determined the Second Amendment allowed an individual right to bear arms. Stevens says he remains convinced that decision was wrong and debatable and provided the National Rifle Association with "a propaganda weapon of immense power."

Stevens' call for repeal of the Second Amendment goes further than most gun control advocates, many of whom have called for banning certain types of weapons and establishing stricter background checks and age limits but for not changing the Constitution.

Stevens' proposal immediately lit up Twitter and social media.

I admire Justice Stevens but his supposedly "simple but dramatic" step of repealing the 2d Am is AWFUL advice. The obstacle to strong gun laws is political, not legal. Urging a politically impossible effort just strengthens opponents of achievable reform. https://t.co/7VzMGXCYeV
- Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 27, 2018

At least one of the Parkland, Fla., students, Cameron Kasky, reacted to Stevens' op-ed arguing it was "very interesting considering who wrote it," but "I don't feel the same way."

A mass shooting last month at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland left 17 people dead and is the catalyst for the "March for Our Lives" movement.

https://t.co/JcFNFTA6VD Not what we're going for here, but very interesting considering who wrote it. Feel free to give it a read. I don't feel the same way, but it's an interesting point of view.
- Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) March 27, 2018

While Stevens claimed such an action would "be simple," it likely would be anything but. Amending the Constitution requires securing two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate - and then three-fourths of the states would have to ratify the amendment.

Our colleague Ron Elving has much more on the many barriers to amending the Constitution here.

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Retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens Calls For Repeal Of Second Amendment

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, responding to this past weekend's March For Our Lives events across the nation, is proposing what some might call a radical solution to prevent further gun violence - repealing the Second Amendment.

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I think 🤬 should be legal because it helps people with anxiety and PTSD.

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Legalize and Regulate Marijuana the Right Way

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As reform efforts expand, we must legalize and regulate marijuana by centering health, justice, equity, and reinvestment. Learn more.

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Animal control should be illegal because they 🤬 innocent animals. And that is just cruel.

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An animal test is any scientific experiment or test in which a live animal is forced to undergo something that is likely to cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.

Animal experiments are not the same as taking your companion animal to the vet. Animals used in laboratories are deliberately harmed, not for their own good, and are usually killed at the end of the experiment.

Animal experiments

Animal experiments include:

injecting or force feeding animals with potentially harmful substances

exposing animals to radiation

surgically removing animals' organs or tissues to deliberately cause damage

forcing animals to inhale toxic gases

subjecting animals to frightening situations to create anxiety and depression.

Animals used

Only vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, fish and amphibians) and some invertebrates such as octopuses are defined as 'animals' by European legislation governing animal experiments. Shockingly, in the USA rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals under animal experiments regulations. That means no legal permission to experiment on them is needed and they are not included in any statistics.

Animals used in experiments are usually bred for this purpose by the laboratory or in breeding facilities. It's a cruel, multi-million dollar industry. Cruelty Free International believes that all animals are equally important. A dog bred for research is still a dog who could otherwise live a happy life in a loving home.

Some monkeys are still trapped in the wild in Africa, Asia and South America to be used in experiments or imprisoned in breeding facilities. Their children are exported to laboratories around the world. The use of wild-caught monkeys in experiments is generally banned in Europe but is allowed elsewhere.

Horses and other animals such as cows, sheep and pigs are often supplied by dealers and may originate from racing stables or farms for use in animal experiments. The rules preventing the use of stray companion animals like dogs and cats vary from country to country.

Animal suffering

A large proportion of animal experiments in the EU are reported to cause 'moderate' or 'severe suffering' to the animals - according to the researchers who carry them out. In the UK in 2016, 35% of animal experiments involved moderate or severe suffering.

Some experiments require the animal to die as part of the test. For example, regulatory tests for botox, vaccines and some tests for chemical safety are essentially variations of the cruel Lethal Dose 50 test in which 50% of the animals die or are killed very close to death.

The strength of botox is measured in mouse LD50 units. This cruel test involves injecting hundreds of mice directly into their abdomens and counting the number who die from poisoning over the next three days. Tens of thousands of mice suffer in this way in the UK and Ireland every year.

Laboratories

Laboratories are no place for any animal. They are typically sterile, indoor environments in which the animals are forced to live in cages - denied complete freedom of movement and control over their lives. Some animals in laboratories are confined on their own, without the companionship of others.

The science relating to animal experiments can be extremely complicated and views often differ. What appears on this website represents Cruelty Free International expert opinion, based on a thorough assessment of the evidence.

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An animal test is any scientific experiment or test in which a live animal is forced to undergo something that is likely to cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm. Animal experiments are not the same as taking your companion animal to the vet.

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Animal testing is wrong and should be illegal and the people should be in jail

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Right now, millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are locked inside barren cages in laboratories across the country. They languish in pain, suffer from extreme frustration, ache with loneliness, and long to be free.

Instead, all they can do is sit and wait in fear of the next terrifying and painful procedure that will be performed on them. The complete lack of environmental enrichment and the stress of their living situation cause some animals to develop neurotic types of behavior such as incessantly spinning in circles, rocking back and forth, pulling out their own fur, and even biting themselves. After enduring a life of pain, loneliness, and terror, almost all of them will be killed.

There are many non-animal test methods that can be used in place of animal testing. Not only are these non-animal tests more humane, they also have the potential to be cheaper, faster, and more relevant to humans.

While some of the experimentation conducted on animals today is required by law, most of it isn't. In fact, a number of countries have implemented bans on the testing of certain types of consumer goods on animals, such as the cosmetics-testing bans in the European Union, India, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, and elsewhere.

Millions of Animals Suffer and Die in Testing, Training, and Other Experiments

More than 100 million animals suffer and die in the U.S. every year in cruel chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics tests as well as in medical training exercisesand curiosity-driven medical experiments at universities. Animals also suffer and die in classroom biology experiments and dissection, even though modern non-animal tests have repeatedly been shown to have more educational value, save teachers time, and save schools money. Exact numbers aren't available because mice, rats, birds, and cold-blooded animals-who make up more than 99 percent of animals used in experiments-are not covered by even the minimal protections of the Animal Welfare Act and therefore go uncounted.

Examples of animal tests include forcing mice and rats to inhale toxic fumes, force-feeding dogs pesticides, and dripping corrosive chemicals into rabbits' sensitive eyes. Even if a product harms animals, it can still be marketed to consumers. Conversely, just because a product was shown to be safe in animals does not guarantee that it will be safe to use in humans.

Taxpayer and Health Charities' Dollars Fund Experiments on Animals

Animals are also used in toxicity tests conducted as part of massive regulatory testing programs that are often funded by U.S. taxpayers' money. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Toxicology Program, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are just a few of the government agencies that subject animals to crude, painful tests.

The federal government and many health charities waste precious dollars from taxpayers and well-meaning donors on animal experiments at universities and private laboratories, instead of supporting promising clinical, in vitro, epidemiological, and other non-animal studies that could actually benefit humans.

A Century of Suffering

Experimenters have tortured animals in laboratories throughout history. " Without Consent," PETA's interactive timeline, features almost 200 stories of twisted experiments, including ones in which dogs were forced to inhale cigarette smoke for months, mice were cut up while still conscious, and cats were deafened, paralyzed, and drowned. Visit " Without Consent " to learn about more harrowing animal experiments throughout history and how you can help create a better future for living, feeling beings.

What You Can Do

Each of us can help prevent animal suffering and deaths by buying cruelty-free products, donating only to charities that don't experiment on animals, requesting alternatives to animal dissection, demanding the immediate implementation of humane, effective non-animal tests by government agencies and corporations, and calling on our alma maters to stop experimenting on animals.

With the help of our members and supporters, PETA campaigns globally to expose and end the use of animals in experiments. Some of our efforts include the following:

This multifaceted approach yields scores of victories for animals imprisoned in laboratories every year.

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Right now, millions of animals are locked inside cages in laboratories across the country. They languish in pain, suffer from frustration, ache with loneliness, and long to be free.

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This link is my entire reason why I'm against a Minimum wage Increase.

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Raising the minimum wage creates winners and losers. Those workers who receive higher pay benefit. But the money for that higher pay comes from somewhere. Advocates for a minimum wage hike usually argue that "somewhere" means profits. They present starting-wage increases as a way to redistribute wealth from business owners to low-wage workers.

Reality is not so simple. Economic research consistently finds that businesses pass minimum-wage costs on to their customers through price increases. Most minimum-wage employees work for small firms in competitive markets. These companies have small profit margins. They can only pay higher wages if they raise prices. Customers-not business owners-pay that cost.

Consequently, minimum-wage increases do little to redistribute wealth. Some low-income families benefit from higher wages, but many more low-income families are hurt by higher prices. Overall minimum-wage effects are more regressive than sales-tax increases.

Some advocates have produced studies claiming that mandatory $15-an-hour starting wages would only slightly increase prices in the fast-food sector. These studies contained numerous analytical errors, including the assumption that a large portion of the wage costs simply disappear. Correcting these errors shows that mandatory $15 starting wages would increase fast-food prices by at least one-fourth.

Minimum-Wage Costs Borne by Customers

Many Americans believe that minimum-wage increases transfer income from business owners to their workers. This impression is incorrect. Most firms employing minimum-wage workers are relatively small businesses, such as fast-food restaurants or "Mom and Pop" retail stores. These firms typically operate in highly competitive markets. As a result, they have fairly low profit margins. The typical fast-food restaurant, for example, earns between 3 cents and 6 cents of profit on each dollar of sales. Most minimum-wage employers could not take the entire cost of higher wages out of their profits, even if they wanted to. And if their profit margins fell significantly, many of these small business owners would seek different lines of work.When starting wages rise, these businesses pass the cost on to their customers and employees.

Most discussion of minimum-wage increases focuses on the employees: Some receive higher pay-at the cost of others being forced to work fewer hours, or being let go. Relatively little attention is paid to how minimum-wage increases affect prices. But customers provide the revenues that cover business expenses. When costs rise, businesses generally compensate by raising prices. Minimum-wage increases are no exception.

Of course, most firms cannot raise prices by themselves without losing business to competitors. A unilateral increase in McDonald's burger prices would send diners to Burger King or Wendy's. But when cost increases hit every firm in an industry, these firms can collectively raise prices. Though higher prices will drive some customers away, no single firm faces a competitive disadvantage.

As a result, most affected businesses respond to mandatory starting-wage increases by raising prices. As the federal Minimum Wage Study Commission found, "The most common types of [employer] responses to the increase in the minimum wage were price increases and wage ripples. No single type of disemployment response was reported with nearly the frequency of these." Customers, not business owners, pay for minimum-wage increases.

Research: Prices Rise

Economists have not studied the minimum wage's price effects as extensively as its employment effects. But the research they have conducted points to higher prices.

Sarah Lemos of the University of Leicester surveyed roughly 30 studies conducted before 2005 examining minimum-wage price effects. These studies found that minimum-wage increases have relatively small effects on the overall price level. They reported that a 10 percent minimum-wage increase raises overall prices by about 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent. Most businesses pay more than the current minimum wage, so minimum-wage increases do not affect their costs or prices very much. But Lemos found that studies of industries with higher concentrations of minimum-wage workers generally showed larger price effects.

This finding fits with economic theory. Southern manufacturers compete nationally and internationally. Higher effective Southern minimum wages do not affect their competitors in other states or countries. Affected manufacturers cannot raise prices without losing customers. However, services are local. Restaurants and hotels paying higher wages compete with local companies whose costs have also risen. Such companies can, and do, respond by raising prices.

More recent research comes to the same conclusion as the studies Lemos surveyed. Daniel Aaronson, Eric French, and James MacDonald, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Department of Agriculture, published a study in 2008 examining how restaurants respond to minimum-wage increases. They used Consumer Price Index (CPI) data and examined the 1996-1997 federal minimum-wage increase. They found that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage raises overall restaurant prices approximately 0.7 percent. Unsurprisingly, they found larger effects in restaurants that employ more minimum-wage workers. Prices increased twice as much-by approximately 1.5 percent-at fast-food restaurants. In lower-wage regions, fast-food prices rose 1.8 percent. Aaronson, French, and MacDonald concluded that their results are consistent with restaurants passing the full cost of minimum-wage increases on to customers, although their results were too imprecise to ascertain whether this actually occurred.

Their estimate was higher than that found by Aaronson and his coauthors. That difference may result from Fougère and his colleagues using a better methodology; it could also occur because France has a higher minimum wage than the United States. Consequently, French minimum-wage increases have a greater effect on restaurant costs. Fougère and his coauthors found somewhat less than full-cost pass-through, but they could not rule out the possibility that French restaurants passed on the entire cost of minimum-wage increases to their customers.

Even left-leaning researchers come to this conclusion. Sylvia Allegretto and Michael Reich are economists at the University of California at Berkeley. Both publicly advocate raising the minimum wage. These researchers examined how San Jose's 2013 starting-wage increase (to $10 an hour) affected restaurant prices. Using online menu data, they concluded that San Jose restaurants passed essentially the full-wage increase on to their customers.

Interestingly, most data show that fast-food restaurants spend only a quarter of their budget on wages and benefits. Basker and Khan's findings thus suggest that restaurants may raise prices more than what is necessary to cover costs.

Higher Prices Reduce Sales

Customers typically buy less at higher prices. This particularly applies to restaurants. Eating out is a luxury for most Americans; as it becomes more expensive, they cut back. Fast-food customers are especially price sensitive.

The following rows show every study conducted on fast-food price responsiveness since 1990. These studies (unsurprisingly) show fast-food customers to be even more price sensitive than restaurant customers overall. On average, they find that a 10 percent increase in restaurant prices causes fast-food sales to drop 9.5 percent.

This price sensitivity means that restaurants must raise prices by more than the amount by which minimum-wage increases raise costs. When they raise prices, they lose business. But restaurants must still cover fixed costs like rent, marketing, and utilities. That requires additional price increases.

Regressive Price Increases

Customers pay for higher starting wages through higher prices. This complicates many minimum-wage advocates' Robin Hood narrative. They often argue that raising starting wages redistributes income from wealthy business owners to poorer workers. But higher minimum wages actually transfer wealth from customers to workers. Many of those customers have low incomes, while many low-wage workers come from affluent families. The poor do not obviously benefit.

MaCurdy found that minimum-wage workers live in families across the income distribution. While they personally have low wages, many live with family members who earn considerably more. Just over 20 percent of the poorest fifth of American families include a minimum-wage worker. A similar proportion of families in the richest fifth do, too. About one in five workers in the second, middle, and fourth income quintiles also include minimum-wage employees. Some poor workers benefit from minimum-wage increases (if they keep their jobs). But a sizeable portion of the benefits go to middle-class and upper-middle-class families.

Price increases caused by minimum-wage increases may disproportionately hit lower-income families. For example, low-income and middle-income families eat more fast food than high-income families. To the extent a minimum wage increase raises fast-food prices, it will hurt the poor and middle class more than the wealthy. MaCurdy also investigated this, finding the minimum-wage increase disproportionately raised prices on the poor.

On average the 1996-1997 federal minimum-wage increase raised prices 0.59 percent on families in the bottom income quintile-slightly more than any other income quintile. Many economists believe that consumption measures living standards better than income. (Some families with low incomes nonetheless enjoy relative affluence, such as retirees drawing on substantial savings.) So MaCurdy also examined families by consumption quintiles. This showed the costs falling even more heavily on the poor. The minimum-wage increase raised prices for the poorest consumption quintile by 0.63 percent. Prices rose just 0.52 percent in the top consumption quintile.

Minimum-wage-driven price increases raise prices disproportionately on goods and services purchased by the poor. Viewed as a consumption tax, the minimum wage charges the poor higher rates than the middle class or the rich. This makes minimum-wage increases' price effects more regressive than sales taxes.

Table 3 shows MaCurdy's analysis of the net redistributive effects of minimum-wage increases. He optimistically assumed that minimum-wage increases eliminate no jobs. He then analyzed who gained and lost from wage and price changes.

MaCurdy found that even under this best-case scenario, the minimum wage only marginally transfers income to the poor. On average, the 1996-1997 minimum-wage increase raised annual incomes in the bottom and second quintiles by $60 and $16 (in 2010 dollars), respectively. It did this by lowering incomes by $40 and $154 in the fourth and top quintiles, respectively. The average family lost $23.The net redistribution occurred because upper quintiles spend more money in total than the lower quintiles. Consequently, they pay more of the price burden than lower-income families, even though the higher prices represent a smaller portion of their overall income.

MaCurdy also found that mandatory starting-wage increases hurt most low-income families: 78 percent of families in the bottom quintile had no minimum-wage workers. They did not benefit from the increase; however, they did face higher prices. On average, these higher prices cost them $74 a year. The average benefit occurred because the smaller number of winners in the bottom quintile gained more than the losers lost.

These figures represent an idealized scenario under which no employees lose their jobs. The net benefit for low-income families turns negative if significant job losses occur. Unfortunately, workers from low-income families are disproportionately likely to lose their jobs when the minimum wage rises. Economists have found that employers shift their hiring toward teenagers from affluent backgrounds (and away from unskilled adults) after the minimum wage increases.

MaCurdy concluded that minimum-wage increases are an ineffective anti-poverty tool. Even under the best-case scenario they transfer few net resources to low-income families. They also hurt more poor families than they help.

Unrealistic Price Forecasts

Even minimum-wage-hike advocates recognize their proposals will increase prices. Unfortunately, many have unrealistic expectations about how much prices would rise. Two widely reported studies estimated that $15 starting wages would only modestly affect fast-food prices. These studies make price consequences seem trivial. They are also deeply flawed.

Researchers at Purdue University's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management released the first study. They estimated the typical fast-food restaurant's sales and expenses. They then calculated how much costs would increase under $15-an-hour starting wages. Their conclusion: just 4.3 percent.

This finding received significant media attention. The Washington Post gave it a full write-up. CBS News covered it. Many papers reported on it nationwide. This reporting highlighted the conclusion that $15 minimum wages would barely raise fast-food prices-just 22 cents more for a Big Mac. Virtually no reporters examined how the researchers reached this conclusion. Had they looked deeper, they would have found two enormous flaws.

As a result, their derived expenses and profits come to just 92 percent of total sales. Fully 8 percent of total outlays disappeared. This hole in restaurant balance sheets absorbed much of the cost of $15 starting wages. It was a mathematical error that made $15 starting wages seem affordable.

Second, the Purdue researchers assumed that higher prices would not affect fast-food sales. Fast-food sales actually fall sharply when prices rise (as Table 1 shows). This means that fast-food restaurants cannot, for example, cover a 10 percent increase in costs by raising prices 10 percent. Their sales will drop at the higher prices. Consumer price sensitivity means that restaurants must raise prices by more than the amount by which their labor costs increase. The Purdue study ignored this dynamic entirely.

PERI Study's Problems

These flaws render the Purdue study essentially meaningless. Although that studyreceived widespread media coverage, economists have paid little attention to it. Instead, serious supporters of $15 starting wages point to the research of economists at the Political Economic Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In a 2015 working paper, Robert Pollin and Jeannette Wicks-Lim analyzed the consequences of a $15 mandate on the fast-food sector.

The PERI economists used a more sophisticated method than the Purdue researchers to estimate by how much $15 starting wages would cause fast-food prices to rise over four years. They accounted for customer price sensitivity and used reliable sources to estimate total costs. They concluded that fast-food restaurants could cover $15 starting wages with a combination of 12 percent higher prices and revenues generated by trend sales growth. Under their scenario, fast-food employment growth would slow down, but the fast-food industry would not lose jobs.

Advocates use this study to argue that requiring $15 starting wages would have only moderately negative side-effects. Unfortunately, Pollin and Wicks-Lim also made serious errors. Three main errors drive their conclusion.

First, they assumed that nationwide fast-food sales rise without fixed costs increasing as well. They modeled fast-food sales rising at a 2.5 percent annual rate. Pollin and Wicks-Lim then calculated by how much variable costs, such as for food and labor, would rise to cover those higher sales. But they assumed that fixed costs, such as rent and marketing, would not increase at all.

That assumption is wrong. Fixed costs must rise to achieve trend sales growth. That trend growth comes from opening new restaurants, increased advertising, and otherwise expanding the fast-food market. These activities increase fixed costs. If fixed costs stayed constant as industry-wide sales increased, fast-food restaurants would enjoy steadily rising profit margins. They do not.

This error creates a more sophisticated hole in fast-food balance sheets: By assumption, revenues rise while fixed costs remain frozen. In their model this difference between revenues and expenses helps pay for the wage increases. The PERI researchers, like the Purdue researchers, assume that much of the cost of a $15 minimum wage simply disappears.

Second, Pollin and Wicks-Lim greatly underestimate how much price increases affect fast-food sales. They calculate price sensitivity by averaging two of the estimates listed in Table 1, Okrent and Alston (2012) and Okrent and Kumcu (2014). But Okrent and Alston is an extreme outlier, estimating much lower price sensitivity than the other studies. Looking at just these two studies implies that 10 percent higher fast-food prices reduce sales by 5 percent-about half of what the other studies find. USDA economists estimated much greater price responsiveness across the entire restaurant sector. It seems unlikely that fast-food customers care less about prices than customers in traditional sit-down restaurants. The PERI model requires that they do.

Third, the PERI study assumed unrealistically large savings from reduced turnover. Higher minimum wages reduce employee turnover, saving employers costs associated with filling vacant positions. Accounting for this makes sense, but Pollin and Wicks-Lim exaggerated these savings. The PERI study relied on a study of hotel-staff-turnover costs. That study found that staff turnover costs hotels an average of $4,700 per position. Pollin and Wicks-Lim applied that same figure to fast-food restaurants.

They should not have done so. Replacing more-skilled employees costs more than filling less-skilled positions. The hotel-turnover study looked at several different positions. It found smaller costs when less-skilled positions turn over: $2,100 for a hotel line cook; $1,300 for room service wait staff. Moreover, cooking fast food generally requires fewer skills than hotel cooking. Assuming that fast-food restaurants pay more than double the turnover costs of hotel cooks seems implausible.

Significantly Higher Prices and Fewer Jobs

Had the PERI economists corrected these problems their analysis would have revealed that $15 starting wages have large negative consequences. Table 4 shows what the PERI model would show if Pollin and Wicks-Lim made three improvements to their calculations:

1. Assuming that fixed costs grow at the same rate as trend sales growth, instead of assuming that fixed costs remain unchanged when trend sales increase;

2. Using the average responsiveness of fast-food sales to price increases found by academic economists instead of looking at only two studies, one of which is an extreme outlier; and

3. Modeling turnover costs of $1,000 instead of $4,700 per fast-food employee vacancy.

The corrected PERI model shows that $15 starting wages significantly increase fast-food production costs. Turnover savings and balance sheet holes no longer absorb much of this increase. In response, the restaurants must raise prices. This causes sales volume to drop; food and labor costs fall proportionately as well. Nonetheless, the original price increase no longer covers fixed costs, such as rent and marketing, at the reduced sales volume. So the restaurants must increase prices yet more. Prices finally reach an equilibrium level where the slightly higher revenues from the price increases and the reduced variable costs (such as employment and food) from lower sales fully offset the higher wage rate.

On the whole, the corrected PERI model appears more reflective of the likely effect of mandatory $15 starting wages than this author's earlier analysis. Nonetheless, both models show large price and employment effects. Contrary to advocates' claims, requiring $15 starting wages would significantly raise prices and reduce employment in the fast-food sector.

Higher Prices Negate Anti-Poverty Effects

Consumers pay for higher minimum wages through higher prices. Large minimum-wage increases require large price increases. The burden of these price increases falls disproportionately on low-income and middle-income Americans. These price increases are more regressive than sales taxes.

This dynamic largely negates minimum-wage increases' anti-poverty effects. Everyone in society-not just business owners-pays the costs through higher prices. Meanwhile, the benefits go to families up and down the income distribution. On balance, minimum-wage increases provide little net benefit to the poor; in fact, more low-income families lose than gain. Minimum-wage increases do not accomplish what their supporters claim they will.
-James Sherk is Research Fellow in Labor Economics in the Center for Data Analysis, of the Institute for Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation. A version of this paper will appear in a forthcoming report from the Employment Policies Institute
Appendix 1

The figures for the "Corrected PERI" in Table 4 come from the author's replication of the model presented in Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim, "A $15 U.S. Minimum Wage: How the Fast Food Industry Could Adjust Without Shedding Jobs," adjusted to use more realistic assumptions.

The model assumes total fast-food revenues of $232 billion in the first year (before any minimum-wage increase) and a total fast-food wage bill (including payroll taxes) of $56.3 billion. The model also assumes 2.5 percent trend growth in fast-food sales volume, a constant profit margin of 5 percent of revenues, and that a $15 wage mandate would increase average labor costs by 59 percent (before accounting for any reduction in turnover expenses). These figures come from Pollin and Wicks-Lim's estimates.

In the model, the $15 mandate raises labor costs (though these cost increases are partially offset by turnover reductions). To remain profitable, the industry raises prices, which causes sales volume to fall relative to trend. The reduction in sales volume reduces variable costs (both labor and purchases) by the same proportionate amount relative to trend, but fixed costs continue to grow at the trend rate. In equilibrium, prices must rise 24 percent while sales volume drops 13 percent relative to the first year, and 21 percent relative to the projected trend growth.

The corrected model differs from the Pollin and Wicks-Lim estimates principally in that:

1. It assumes that fixed costs grow at the same rate as trend sales volume instead of remaining unchanged at the year-one level;

2. It assumes a price elasticity of fast-food demand of -0.95 instead of -0.5; and

3. It assumes that fast-food restaurants experience a 100 percent (not 120 percent) annual turnover rate and that filling a vacancy costs $1,000 (not $4,700). Under these assumptions reduced turnover offsets 2.8 percent of the higher wage bill associated with a $15 mandate, not 20 percent.

The full model calculations are available from the author upon request.

Appendix 2

Sources for Table 1

Tatiana Andreyeva, Michael W. Long, and Kelly D. Brownell, "The Impact of Food Prices on Consumption: A Systematic Review of Research on the Price Elasticity of Demand for Food," American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 100, No. 2 (February 2010), Table 1.

Abigail Okrent and Aylin Kumcu, "What's Cooking? Demand for Convenience Foods in the United States," selected paper prepared for presentation at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association's 2014 AAEA Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, July 27-29, 2014.

Mark D. Jekanowski, James K. Binkley, and James S. Eales, "Convenience, Accessibility, and the Demand for Fast Food," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2001).

Douglas M. Brown, "The Restaurant and Fast Food Race: Who's Winning?" Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4 (April 1990), pp. 984-995.

Timothy Richards and Lisa Mancino, "Demand for Food-Away-from-Home: A Multiple-Discrete-Continuous Extreme Value Model," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2014), pp. 111-133.

Abigail Okrent and Julian Alston, "The Demand for Disaggregated Food-Away-from-Home and Food-at-Home Products in the United States," United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Economic Research Report No. ERR-139, August 2012.

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$15 Minimum Wages Will Substantially Raise Prices

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Raising the minimum wage creates winners and losers. Those workers who receive higher pay benefit. But the money for that higher pay comes from somewhere. Advocates for a minimum wage hike usually argue that "somewhere" means profits. They present starting-wage increases as a way to redistribute wealth from business owners to low-wage workers.

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Animals are apart of the world. So why let them suffer? We can't take their lives away. Especially since there are other things that are killing them, too. Animals have lives; they should not be tested and treated like dirt!
#savethefluffbabies
http://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/what-animal-testing

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I think that people the age of 21 should be able to legally buy a gun. Anybody 21 or younger should not. Before people can buy a gun they should have to take test and be able to pass them with a average score. Kids these days should not be able to have guns because of how kids are shooting up schools these days.

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The Brady Bill and an assault weapon ban are finally law. Congress may add a few frills like fee hikes for federally licensed gun dealers and tax hikes on ammunition. But the killing in our core cities, especially the killing of young black men by other young black men, will continue almost as if nothing has happened.

Yet something must surely be done. Youth gun homicide has risen sharply since the mid-1980s. It is now higher for teenagers than for the general population, and far higher for black teenage males: in 1990, roughly 100 killed for every 100,000 between the ages of 15 and 19 (versus 9.7 for every 100,000 white males in the same age group). The gun homicide rate conceals a mass of nonfatal woundings--some 5.7 for every death. And the problem is getting worse, not better.

The reality on the street is even starker. A 1993 national poll by LH Research found that 30 percent of black adults know a child who was wounded or killed by another child with a gun. Drive through Washington, D.C., within rifleshot of the White House, and look at all the young black men with canes--they weren't maimed playing football. In Cabrini Green, one of Chicago's appalling high-rise housing projects, I have talked with mothers who will not let children out of their apartments except to escort them to and from school. In these communities many children do not talk about "when" they will grow up; they talk about "if." Tulane University researchers Joseph Sheley and James Wright recently surveyed high school students in four troubled minority communities--more than a third carried guns at least occasionally (One student, asked what caliber gun he owned, pulled it out of his clothes to check.) Research by Carolyn and Richard Block suggests that nearly all of Chicago's recent increase in gang-related killing is attributable to bigger, better handguns.

CLOSE THE MARKET

Can we do anything to keep guns out of kids' hands? Tighter gun control alone will not work. In most cities with serious juvenile gun problems, the purchase and possession of handguns by juveniles are already illegal. The shootings and deaths have increased just the same. Forty-one percent of Sheley and Wright's students said obtaining guns was "no trouble at all," and they paid well below retail prices for the guns they bought on the street. Increasing penalties for violating gun laws won't help much either. The effectiveness of such laws depends on the commitment of police, prosecutors, and the courts, as well as the availability of prison space to back them up. The first is difficult to obtain (police, prosecutors, and courts tend to adjust their actions to the nuances of each case); the second, prison space, is in increasingly short supply And many juvenile gun offenders think and care little about even severe punishment.

A better target for our efforts would be the black market in guns, which so far has received little serious attention. Federal gun legislation mainly affects new weapons sold by federally licensed dealers. The laws do not reach many older guns, nor small-scale private dealers, and they do not create the recordkeeping and transfer protocols required to monitor and control the movement of guns. Measures to correct these deficiencies are from time to time proposed in Congress, where they die. Gun and anti-gun activists conclude, alternatively, that there is no point in attempting to control firearms, or that there is little point to anything short of outright bans. This logjam is unlikely to be broken anytime soon.

At the local level, the illegal gun trade proceeds unhindered by anything approaching a concerted police response. Strategies and tactics routinely deployed against other threats to public safety are strikingly absent from the gun-crime landscape. Given the opportunity, police are willing to make firearms arrests, but such charges tend to be incidental to other enforcement activities.

Departments almost never give the black market in firearms the same priority they do narcotics or prostitution. They rarely take advantage of opportunities to identify and penetrate the gun trade by back-tracing illegal weapons used in crimes, demanding information about weapons sources as a condition of plea bargaining, or mounting stings or undercover operations. And they are rarely sophisticated about working with federal authorities on gun cases. "If we find a kid with a gun, we're happy to settle for a conviction," says Jim Jordan, the Boston Police Department's Director of Policy Development. "We don't even ask where he got it."

This is quite peculiar. The black market in guns, as my colleague Mark Moore has shown, is essentially local. Guns are readily available through local sources: they can be stolen from homes or gun dealers, or purchased from licensed and unlicensed dealers and resold. Even operations to move weapons from states with loose gun laws to states with strict ones typically consist of only a few people with a car (or a gym bag and a bus ticket). Many black-market gun dealers buy guns from thieves and resell them as they would any other hot commodity, As a panel from the National Academy of Sciences noted in a 1993 report, Understanding and Preventing Violence, this is the kind of crime local police, whose strength and number dwarf federal enforcement capacity, should make their business.

It is thus encouraging to see, for instance, the New York City Police Department's recent decision to mount undercover operations against illegal gun dealers. But no practicable amount of ordinary police work will shut these markets down. Departments must break the classic enforcement mold.

THE IDEA OF MARKET DISRUPTION

Hope lies in a new set of market disruption approaches developed in community policing circles and deployed with great effectiveness against street drug markets. Over the past decade, several cities plagued by serious street drug problems have successfully interfered with street trafficking so that the markets ceased to function.

For example, police in Tampa, Florida mounted a model operation known as QUAD (Quick Uniform Attack on Drugs) to combat a widespread crack problem on the streets. They made it difficult for buyers to find dealers by intensifying enforcement to keep dealers on the move. They used community allies to locate and report new street dealing sites and drug stashes. Posing as dealers, police pulled "reverse stings" and arrested buyers, making other buyers feel vulnerable. Officers interfered with business by loitering around dealing sites, used local ordinances to clear crowds from known trafficking areas, and cooperated with city authorities to knock down abandoned houses and shut down businesses used for dealing. Six months into QUAD, public dealing was virtually extinct. The disruption strategy had caused, in relatively short order, the near collapse of the street market.

Gun markets are more surreptitious than drug markets. But a disruption strategy for the youth gun market could still succeed.

Since gun transactions among adults are not necessarily crimes, there is no easy way to tell whether a seller, a buyer, or a particular transaction is illegal. But kids caught buying and carrying guns, and people caught selling guns to them, are prima facie lawbreakers. Equally important, public feeling on youth and firearms is universally negative. Illegal firearms transactions among adults do not always draw public outrage or official action. If a gun dealer illegally sells a weapon to a middle-class suburbanite, the community tends to show tolerance. Even the deadly use of illegal weapons can win considerable support. But nobody thinks kids should have guns. Measures to prevent kids from getting firearms would be popular with officials and community members. If disruption strategies can be designed, communities will help.

WHY KIDS WANT GUNS

To successfully disrupt the youth market we must understand why kids get guns. This means going beyond the three most common theories, which are increasingly inadequate to explain what's happening in the inner city.

The drug trade. Where there is serious drug dealing there will be guns. There is no question that the rise in juvenile black male homicide that began in the mid-1980s coincided with the rise of crack cocaine. In many cities, the crack market is characterized by a young minority work force and open-air trafficking with a high degree of turf-related and other violence.

But the close connection between youth violence and the crack trade sometimes dissolves upon closer examination. The Blocks research in Chicago suggests that very little of that city's spiraling youth violence rate is drug-related. It seems, rather, to be turf-related, with recent increases in killings due to gangs' use of more powerful guns. In Richmond, Virginia, Russell Boxley and his colleagues found that the trafficking issues provoking drug-market killings were not significantly different from other kinds of disputes that often sparked violence among the same groups of people.

While levels of youth violence and drug trafficking increased together during the mid-198Os, more recently the trends have diverged. In Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., youth homicide continued to increase in the early 1990s even as the drug trade diminished. Today, the fact that so many homicides and assaults seem inexplicable is what most disturbs communities. Kids are killing each other over jewelry, sidelong glances, and, at times, for no apparent reason at all.

Gangs. Another popular explanation for the spread of violence centers on youth gangs, some engaged in drug-trafficking and some not, using guns to protect turf and to settle disputes. But what is a gang? Gangs range from sophisticated economic organizations (some of which appear to eschew violence except for business purposes), to moderately organized ethnic groups, to ad-hoc bands of friends. Since they tend to come to public attention only when they commit violent crimes, and since officials call any affiliated group that commits violence a gang, "gang violence" is at times a tautology.

A more important problem is causality: do gangs cause violence, or does violence cause gangs? Kids in violent areas band together for support and protection. Having done so, they are obliged to stand up for one another, and they become actors and targets in cyclic exchanges of violence. The ready availability of guns, then, must be a significant contributing factor to the creation of gangs and gang violence. Measures to keep guns out of kids' hands might serve to moderate both.

Culture of violence. Most recently, attention has focused on cultural factors, such as the media and the intergenerational impact of domestic violence and sexual abuse. This would explain the appalling "senseless" acts that seem more and more common, and link them to an adult world that exhibits many of the same features.

Many public health analysts use this frame. Deborah Prothrow-Stith and others have written powerfully of how movies, television, music, and parents encourage youth violence. Their research points to the inability of many adolescents to imagine nonviolent conflict resolutions; it shows how youth culture encourages and rewards violent behavior. But these arguments do not explain how presumably long-standing cultural factors could account for the explosive rise in youth homicide. Nor do they explain causality. Is the youth demand for guns driven by this cultural appetite for violence? Or is youth violence so bad in part because guns are so prevalent and have the effect of polarizing groups and raising the risks of violent behavior?

THE PRIMACY OF FEAR

Terror is what ties these accounts together. It appears that we have entered into a distinct second phase of the impact of drug trafficking on communities. In the first phase, trafficking and competition among traffickers caused high levels of violence, in a pattern reminiscent of Prohibition. While appalling, this violence was fundamentally instrumental: it generally served or emerged from business interests, albeit illegal ones.

That violence, however, profoundly increased the fear in affected communities, which in turn brought more weaponry. Traffickers, many of them young and not particularly measured, armed themselves. The streets were the marketplace, so business disputes were settled in public. There were no safe havens--nonplayers had nowhere to escape. Many part-time drug dealers became full-time gun owners. The trade was ruled by the same self-regulation that governs all illicit enterprises: those who offend get hurt. But since traffickers were numerous and dispersed throughout the community, that gangland ethos came to govern even more ordinary interactions as well.

In short, many of the newly armed boys (and girls) in the 'hood are not depraved. They are scared--and rightly so. Sheley and Wright found more than 40 percent of their high school students had been shot at or threatened with a gun; nearly half knew schoolmates who had been fired on. Not surprisingly, self-defense was far and away the main reason these kids armed themselves. In the 1993 LH Research poll, 33 percent of black adults reported knowing "a child who was so worried he or she got a gun for self protection."

The more kids arm themselves, the greater the chance of shootings, and the more readily kids arm themselves. Mix in youthful impulsiveness and the result is spur-of-the-moment mayhem. "The scariest thing," a Detroit high school senior told Carl Taylor, "is that you never know when they're going to get into an argument and start shooting."

In such an environment the "senseless" shootings that have become commonplace should come as no surprise. These kids are armed and edgy. They believe they cannot walk away from a fight without irretrievably losing face. They are surrounded by violence, and feel that they have few alternatives. They cannot get out of Dodge, nor is anybody making them check their guns at the edge of town.

Many of the kids involved in this life do not really want to live it. Less readily avail-able weaponry would ease tensions and diminish the deadliness of incidents. It might lead to clearer divisions between dangerous offenders and other less committed users, and allow responses more appropriately tailored to each class. A weapon-centered approach is certainly not a perfect or complete response to youth violence, but it would facilitate and reinforce other approaches.

Can we design such a program? Yes, but it will take custom-designed strategies, developed and implemented primarily by local authorities. Different local markets require different disruption plans. Patterns of acquisition and distribution are different in Georgia, which has few restrictions on gun sales, and Massachusetts, which is heavily regulated; or in Chicago, where the killing is largely gang-related, and Washington, where it has more to do with drugs. The strategy must be comprehensive, with mutually reinforcing tactics tailored to local circumstances. Stiff penalties for selling and buying, measures to reduce gun movement from the legitimate to the black market, and measures to reduce youths' fear are unlikely to have much impact if they are pursued in piecemeal fashion.

Central to making those strategies work will be detailed, timely information on particular youth gun markets. Among the questions we need to ask: How do kids acquire guns in a particular city? Why do they do it? Do they buy from the same sources as adult offenders? Is there a distinct illicit gun market, or are guns passed along channels also used for drugs and other contraband? Are there many sources of supply, or relatively few? How open is the trade? Are sellers bold or wary? What makes them willing and unwilling to sell? Are there different supply channels to hardcore and casual consumers? Are particular weapons in vogue? How does information about sources of supply reach consumers, and how widely is it known?

Although police departments already have a great deal of scattered information on gun markets, they seldom put it together. A first step would be to consolidate existing information in a fashion that supports problem solving.

From them, police could tap other sources of information, including:

Kids. If youth gun markets are as vigorous as they appear to be--they often include rental markets for busy weekends, parties, and such--their workings will be fairly widely known. Some knowledgeable youth, both players and nonplayers, will be willing to talk if police can ensure their safety. Departments need to develop new relationships with young people to learn what they need to know.

Offenders. Criminals are useful sources of information. In Tampa, interviews with jailed criminals helped convince the department that suppressing street crack markets would reduce crime and disorder. Boston's gang unit has found gang members willing to share information useful for understanding and sometimes preventing gang violence. Black market gun dealers and kids who have acquired weapons illegally are rich sources of information.

Parents and other community sources. Parents in communities troubled by youth gun violence are potentially powerful sources of information. They should be encouraged to help the community set a "zero tolerance" standard. Some are likely to cooperate with police if they think their children will be treated well, and if they can do so safely. Departments should explore ways to build working relationships with such parents. School security authorities, teachers, youth social service workers, and church leaders could also develop information on the youth gun market. Some will be willing to cooperate with police if their own interests are protected.

Gun dealers and gun regulators. Legitimate gun dealers may have information about how kids obtain guns and which adult intermediaries deal guns to kids. Black market gun dealers may be willing to inform on rivals or bargain with information when facing prosecution. Federal authorities may have information useful to local police, as well as the investigative and enforcement capacity to support local information gathering.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Although strategies would differ from city to city one can sketch a hypothetical operation. To block access to gun supplies, police could work with parents and kids to identify owners of gun stockpiles. (Parental authorization would be sufficient to allow police searches of houses and apartments, perhaps during an initial amnesty.) Private and nonprofit partners could offer residents in high-burglary areas trigger locks and advice on storing firearms securely, Federal authorities could trace illegal weapons to licensed vendors, and put them under scrutiny or arrange for their licenses to be revoked. Prosecutors and courts could work to ensure swift and stiff punishments for adult "straws" selling to kids.

To attack the security of sellers, we need state laws making straws who sell guns to kids jointly liable for crimes committed with those guns. Police could work under-cover and cultivate confidential informants to buy guns illegally, They could also offer juvenile offenders caught with guns plea bargains based on naming their suppliers. To attack the security of buyers, police could mount stings, offer black market dealers plea bargains based on fingering clients, work with parole and probation officers to intensify supervision of kids who are court-involved for gun offenses, and negotiate protocols for street searches with representatives of troubled communities. (To avoid antagonizing the community, these should be aimed at enlisting local support for the exercise of existing police powers.)

To deter black marketers from selling to kids, authorities could mount comprehensive enforcement efforts against drug and fencing organizations known to be selling guns to kids (thereby sending a signal that such dealing will trigger attacks on all fronts of one's business). States could legislate asset forfeiture for dealing guns to minors. Related suppression of the street drug trade would take money out of the pockets of kids likely to buy and use guns. Raising the costs and lowering the benefits of the youth gun trade might dissuade new entrants into the business. To the extent that stores, bars, and other businesses were fronting for youth dealers, civil abatement proceedings could shut them down.

Fresh insights and strategies are likely to emerge both from close examination of particular markets and from experience gamed as particular disruption strategies evolve. Richer information and operational experience could reveal unexpected opportunities.

In Tampa, for instance, equipping officers with digital beepers that allowed rapid, personal, but clandestine contact between the police and community supporters turned out to be critical to a robust flow of timely operational intelligence about street markets. And new tactics were developed during the operation that nobody could possibly have imagined ahead of time. Street dealers, for instance, generally hide stashes not on their persons but nearby--in a tree or a patch of tall grass--in case they are robbed or arrested. QUAD officers started getting calls from neighborhood sources who observed the dealers closely and could pinpoint the stashes. Police simply seized the drugs, strangling the dealers' cash flow. If we look hard, we are bound to find equivalent weaknesses in youth gun markets.

OTHER STRATEGIES FOR FIGHTING FEAR

The more kids' fear can be reduced, the less they will want guns and the more effective market-disruption strategies will be. Three ideas deserve particular mention. First, street drug markets and gang disputes create high levels of violence, disorder, and fear. Cities should explore QUAD-type operations to shut down drug markets, and work with kids and others close to the street to prevent gang violence. Police units like the Boston antigang violence squad and grass-roots groups like Clementine Barfield's Save Our Sons and Daughters in Detroit have had success preventing individual incidents from growing into vendettas. Second, criminal justice resources should be focused on taking repeat violent juvenile gun offenders off the streets. Third, some community policing departments are developing innovative means to identify and address fear. In one model operation in Baltimore County, officers defused a budding racial conflict by separating bus stops that brought warring groups of black and white kids into regular contact, then worked with both groups to prevent further trouble. More along these lines is possible.

No one of these measures is likely to make much of an impact. The power of market disruption and allied approaches would come from multiple attacks, and the interaction of multiple attacks, to the incentives and free functioning of the market. The mounting of the operation would itself be a deterrent; in many jurisdictions buying and selling in the youth black market is a largely risk-free enterprise, and a clever operation (including a community actively mobilized against guns) could hope to raise participants' sense of vulnerability considerably.

It is too much to hope that any of this would end illegal dealing in guns. But an effective youth market strategy might serve to split the adult market off from the youth market, leaving illicit dealers still in the gun business but unwilling, or substantially less willing, to deal to kids. It might, along with other efforts to fight fear, arrest the spiraling juvenile arms race. Given the juvenile death toll, and the special contribution of armed kids to the disruption of troubled communities, that would be a success.

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The Brady Bill and an assault weapon ban are finally law. Congress may add a few frills like fee hikes for federally licensed gun dealers and tax hikes on ammunition. But the killing in our core cities, especially the killing of young black men by other young black men, will continue almost as if nothing has happened.

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Animal testing is cruel and harsh. More than 100 million animals are killed each year for no reason. they were innocent animals that were killed for nothing.

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Each year, more than 110 million animals-including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds-are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed. In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them-they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. The thinking, feeling animals who are used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment.

Animal Experiments Are Wasteful and Unreliable

A Pew Research Center poll found that 52 percent of U.S. adults oppose the use of animals in scientific research, and other surveys suggest that the shrinking group that does accept animal experimentation does so only because it believes it to be necessary for medical progress. 5,6 The majority of animal experiments do not contribute to improving human health, and the value of the role that animal experimentation plays in most medical advances is questionable.

In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that medical treatments developed in animals rarely translated to humans and warned that "patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the finding of prominent animal research to the care of human disease ... poor replication of even high-quality animal studies should be expected by those who conduct clinical research." ⁷

Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory, whether they be mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way.

For example, according to former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner, "We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans." ⁸ This conclusion was echoed by former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who acknowledged that experimenting on animals has been a boondoggle. "We have moved away from studying human disease in humans," he said. "We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. ... The problem is that it hasn't worked, and it's time we stopped dancing around the problem. ... We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans." ⁹

The data is sobering: Although at least 85 HIV/AIDS vaccines have been successful in nonhuman primate studies, as of 2015, every one has failed to protect humans. ¹⁰ In one case, an AIDS vaccine that was shown to be effective in monkeys failed in human clinical trials because it did not prevent people from developing AIDS, and some believe that it made them more susceptible to the disease. According to a report in the British newspaper The Independent, one conclusion from the failed study was that "testing HIV vaccines on monkeys before they are used on humans, does not in fact work." ¹¹

These are not anomalies. The National Institutes of Health has stated, "Therapeutic development is a costly, complex and time-consuming process. The average length of time from target discovery to approval of a new drug is about 14 years. The failure rate during this process exceeds 95 percent, and the cost per successful drug can be $1 billion or more." ¹²

Research published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that universities commonly exaggerate findings from animal experiments conducted in their laboratories and "often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations." ¹³ One study of media coverage of scientific meetings concluded that news stories often omit crucial information and that "the public may be misled about the validity and relevance of the science presented." ¹⁴ Because experimenters rarely publish results of failed animal studies, other scientists and the public do not have ready access to information on the ineffectiveness of animal experimentation.

Funding and Accountability

Through their taxes, charitable donations, and purchases of lottery tickets and consumer products, members of the public are ultimately the ones who-knowingly or unknowingly-fund animal experimentation. One of the largest sources of funding comes from publicly funded government granting agencies such as NIH. Approximately 47 percent of NIH-funded research involves experimentation on animals, and in 2020, NIH budgeted nearly $42 billion for research and development. 15,16 In addition, many charities--including the March of Dimes, the American Cancer Society, and countless others-use donations to fund experiments on animals. One-third of the projects funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society involve animal experimentation. ¹⁷

Despite the vast amount of public funds being used to underwrite animal experimentation, it is nearly impossible for the public to obtain current and complete information regarding the animal experiments that are being carried out in their communities or funded with their tax dollars. State open-records laws and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act can be used to obtain documents and information from state institutions, government agencies, and other federally funded facilities, but private companies, contract labs, and animal breeders are exempt. In many cases, institutions that are subject to open-records laws fight vigorously to withhold information about animal experimentation from the public. ¹⁸

Oversight and Regulation

Despite the countless animals killed each year in laboratories worldwide, most countries have grossly inadequate regulatory measures in place to protect animals from suffering and distress or to prevent them from being used when a non-animal approach is readily available. In the U.S., the species most commonly used in experiments (mice, rats, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians) comprise 99% of all animals in laboratories but are specifically exempted from even the minimal protections of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). 19,20 Many laboratories that use only these species are not required by law to provide animals with pain relief or veterinary care, to search for and consider alternatives to animal use, to have an institutional committee review proposed experiments, or to be inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or any other entity. Some estimates indicate that as many as 800 U.S. laboratories are not subject to federal laws and inspections because they experiment exclusively on mice, rats, and other animals whose use is largely unregulated. ²¹

As for the more than 11,000 facilities that the USDA does regulate (of which more than 1,200 are designated for "research"), only 120 USDA inspectors are employed to oversee their operations. ²² Reports have repeatedly concluded that even the minimal standards set forth by the AWA are not being met by these facilities, and institutionally based oversight bodies, called Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs), have failed to carry out their mandate. A 1995 report by the USDA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) "found that the activities of the IACUCs did not always meet the standards of the AWA. Some IACUCs did not ensure that unnecessary or repetitive experiments would not be performed on laboratory animals." ²³ In 2000, a USDA survey of the agency's laboratory inspectors revealed serious problems in numerous areas, including "the search for alternatives [and] review of painful procedures." ²⁴ A September 2005 audit report issued by the OIG found ongoing "problems with the search for alternative research, veterinary care, review of painful procedures, and the researchers' use of animals." ²⁵ In December 2014, an OIG report documented continuing problems with laboratories failing to comply with the minimal AWA standards and the USDA's weak enforcement actions failing to deter future violations. The audit highlighted that from 2009 to 2011, USDA inspectors cited 531 experimentation facilities for 1,379 violations stemming from the IACUCs' failure to adequately review and monitor the use of animals. The audit also determined that in 2012, the USDA reduced its penalties to AWA violators by an average of 86 percent, even in cases involving animal deaths and egregious violations. ²⁶

Research co-authored by PETA documented that, on average, animal experimenters and laboratory veterinarians comprise a combined 82 percent of the membership of IACUCs at leading U.S. institutions. A whopping 98.6 percent of the leadership of these IACUCs was also made up of animal experimenters. The authors observed that the dominant role played by animal experimenters on these committees "may dilute input from the few IACUC members representing animal welfare and the general public, contribute to previously-documented committee bias in favor of approving animal experiments and reduce the overall objectivity and effectiveness of the oversight system." ²⁷ Even when facilities are fully compliant with the law, animals who are covered can be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, forcibly restrained, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged. No procedures or experiments, regardless of how trivial or painful they may be, are prohibited by federal law. When valid non-animal research methods are available, no federal law requires experimenters to use such methods instead of animals.

Alternatives to Animal Testing

A high-profile study published in the prestigious BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) documenting the ineffectiveness and waste of experimentation on animals concluded that "if research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, the public's continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced." ²⁸

Research with human volunteers, sophisticated computational methods, and in vitro studies based on human cells and tissues are critical to the advancement of medicine. Cutting-edge non-animal research methods are available and have been shown time and again to be more accurate than crude animal experiments. ²⁹ However, this modern research requires a different outlook, one that is creative and compassionate and embraces the underlying philosophy of ethical science. Human health and well-being can also be promoted by adopting nonviolent methods of scientific investigation and concentrating on the prevention of disease before it occurs, through lifestyle modification and the prevention of further environmental pollution and degradation. The public is becoming more aware and more vocal about the cruelty and inadequacy of the current research system and is demanding that tax dollars and charitable donations not be used to fund experiments on animals.

History of Animal Testing

PETA created " Without Consent"-an interactive timeline featuring almost 200 stories of animal experiments from the past century-to open people's eyes to the long history of suffering that's been inflicted on nonconsenting animals in laboratories and to challenge people to rethink this exploitation. Visit " Without Consent " to learn more about harrowing animal experiments throughout history and how you can help create a better future for living, feeling beings.
Without Consent
You Can Help Stop Animal Testing

Virtually all federally funded research is paid for with your tax dollars. Your lawmakers needs to know that you don't want your money used to pay for animal experiments.

Urge your members of Congress to endorse PETA's Research Modernization Deal, which provides a roadmap for modernizing U.S. investment in research by ending funding for useless experiments on animals and investing in effective research that's relevant to humans.
Take Action Not a U.S. Resident? Take Action Here
Animal Testing Facts and Figures

Almost 1 million animals are held captive in laboratories or used in experiments (excluding rats, mice, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and agricultural animals used in agricultural experiments), plus an estimated 110 million mice and rats

69 million animals used in experiments as reported by CCAC-certified institutions*

115,818 animals subjected to "severe pain near, at, or above the pain tolerance threshold of unanesthetized conscious animals"

*The Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) is a "national peer-review organization" that is funded by the Canadian government but has no regulatory capacity. Only institutions that receive public funds are required to be certified by the CCAC, and the figures reported by the organization reflect only this subset of facilities. Most private research facilities are not certified by the CCAC, and their animal use is not accounted for in the CCAC's figures.

76 million procedures on animals

Of those procedures, 110,400 were assessed to be "severe," including "long-term disease processes where assistance with normal activities such as feeding and drinking are required or where significant deficits in behaviours/activities persist."

References

¹Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, " Annual Report Animal Usage by Fiscal Year: Total Number of Animals Research Facilities Used in Regulated Activities (Column B)" and " Annual Report Animal Usage by Fiscal Year: Total Number of Animals Research Facilities used in Regulated Activities (Column F)," 27 Apr. 2021.
²Larry Carbone, " Estimating Mouse and Rat Use in American Laboratories by Extrapolation From Animal Welfare Act-Regulated Species," Scientific Reports 11, 493 (2021).
³Canadian Council on Animal Care, " CCAC 2021 Animal Data Report," 2022
⁴U.K. Government, " Annual Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2022," Home Office, 13 July 2023.
⁵Cary Funk and Meg Hefferon, " Most Americans Accept Genetic Engineering of Animals That Benefits Human Health, but Many Oppose Other Uses," Pew Research Center, 16 Aug. 2018
⁶Peter Aldhous and Andy Coghlan, " Let the People Speak," New Scientist 22 May 1999.
⁷Daniel G. Hackam, M.D., and Donald A. Redelmeier, M.D., " Translation of Research Evidence From Animals to Human," The Journal of the American Medical Association 296 (2006): 1731-2.
⁸Marlene Simmons et al., " Cancer-Cure Story Raises New Questions," Los Angeles Times 6 May 1998.
⁹Rich McManus, "Ex-Director Zerhouni Surveys Value of NIH Research," NIH Record 21 June 2013.
¹⁰Jarrod Bailey, " An Assessment of the Role of Chimpanzees in AIDS Vaccine Research," Alternatives to Laboratory Animals 36 (2008): 381-428.
¹¹Steve Connor and Chris Green, " Is It Time to Give Up the Search for an AIDS Vaccine?" The Independent 24 Apr. 2008.
¹²National Institutes of Health, " About New Therapeutic Uses," National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences 9 Oct. 2019.
¹³Steve Woloshin, M.D., M.S., et al., " Press Releases by Academic Medical Centers: Not So Academic?" Annals of Internal Medicine 150 (2009): 613-8.
¹⁴Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, " Media Reporting on Research Presented at Scientific Meetings: More Caution Needed," The Medical Journal of Australia 184 (2006): 576-80.
¹⁵Diana E. Pankevich et al., " International Animal Research Regulations: Impact on Neuroscience Research," The National Academies (2012).
¹⁶National Institutes of Health, " Budget," (last accessed on 3 May 2021).
¹⁷Pankevich et al.
¹⁸Deborah Ziff, " On Campus: PETA Sues UW Over Access to Research Records," Wisconsin State Journal 5 Apr. 2010.
¹⁹U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "Animal Welfare, Definition of Animal," Federal Register, 69 (2004): 31513-4.
²⁰Justin Goodman et al., " Trends in Animal Use at US Research Facilities," Journal of Medical Ethics 0(2015): 1-3.
²¹The Associated Press, "Animal Welfare Act May Not Protect All Critters," 7 May 2002.
²²U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "Animal Care: Search."
²³U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, " APHIS Animal Care Program, Inspection and Enforcement Activities," audit report, 30 Sept. 2005.
²⁴U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, " USDA Employee Survey on the Effectiveness of IACUC Regulations," Apr. 2000.
²⁵U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, "APHIS Animal Care Program, Inspection and Enforcement Activities," audit report, 30 Sept. 2005.
²⁶U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, " Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Oversight of Research Facilities," audit report, Dec. 2014.
²⁷Lawrence A. Hansen et al., " Analysis of Animal Research Ethics Committee Membership at American Institutions," Animals 2 (2012): 68-75.
²⁸Pandora Pound and Michael Bracken, " Is Animal Research Sufficiently Evidence Based To Be A Cornerstone of Biomedical Research?," BMJ (2014): 348.
²⁹Junhee Seok et al., " Genomic Responses in Mouse Models Poorly Mimic Human Inflammatory Diseases," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013): 3507-12.

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Animal Testing Facts and Statistics | PETA

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The facts on animal testing are clear: Researchers in U.S. laboratories kill more than 110 million animals in wasteful and unreliable experiments each year.

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Parents, grandparents and other adults told me that marijuana use could kill me - the same advice that many young people heard.

My middle school health courses equated marijuana with crack, PCP and cocaine as hard street drugs. I appreciate that it was a scare tactic, but if that caution was truly warranted I also deserved similar warnings about the dangers of processed food, soda or prescription drugs.

In college, I did my research and quickly found out the truth: marijuana is no more dangerous, and in some cases less dangerous, than most of the other things we put into our bodies.

Despite this disparity, marijuana remains illegal in most states and its use is still taboo. It's time to make a change toward legalizing this drug, and there are three big reasons why.

1. If alcohol and cigarettes are legal, marijuana should be too.

Legal consistency is important. I can buy huge amounts of vodka or menthol cigarettes nearly anywhere in the U.S., and we can attribute thousands of lost lives to those products, but I have to visit Washington or Colorado to legally purchase a joint, which is a far safer pleasure. The strength of regulation we apply to our actions has to be proportionate to their danger.

According to the CDC, alcohol overdose alone caused nearly 25,000 deaths in 2013 and contributed to nearly 16,000 deaths from liver disease. Alcohol-related crimes resulted in 2.2 million arrests in 2012. Cigarettes are just as bad, causing nearly 500,000 deaths in the United States per year with medical bills approaching $140 billion per year. Unhealthy foods are the worst of all, with latest statistics demonstrating that obesity is related to the deaths of nearly 20 percent of Americans per year, and that health care costs associated with being overweight are as much as $200 billion per year in the United States.

Try and regulate any of those and you'll face serious backlash. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg saw a storm of criticism when he attempted to institute measures to curb the consumption of junk food.

2. Marijuana shows promise for good medicine.

After my third football-related knee surgery, doctors diagnosed me with arthritis at 24 years old. They treated my pain and swelling with Vioxx, Indocin and Toradol. In the years that followed, I learned that these prescription drugs took a toll on my liver and other organs and that I should have avoided using them (and the makers of Vioxx have since withdrawn this drug from the market).

This knowledge was too little, too late when I already had years of daily prescription use under my belt during my five-year NFL career. But if I had used marijuana medicinally, which shows promise in treating arthritis and bears minimal chance of organ damage, the NFL would have fined me and I could have faced prosecution - a risk that an estimated 50 percent of NFL players run each season because they accept the legitimate medical and recreational uses of the drug.

Even beyond sports medicine, users report that marijuana has a host of health-related advantages. It stops pain, mitigates multiple sclerosis and Tourette Syndrome symptoms, and may reduce dystonia, among other beneficial effects. But state legislatures haven't wised up to the potential treatment they deny their citizens while marijuana use remains criminal. In the U.S., we arrest people all the time for marijuana offenses - over 12 million of them since 1980.

It's well past time to get with the program. Even Super Bowl-winning Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll recently suggested the NFL should consider medicinal marijuana as a legitimate treatment for the injuries its players sustain.

3. Money matters, as usual.

Legalizing marijuana can make sense from a fiscal standpoint, too. Colorado was the first state to legalize and regulate recreational use of marijuana, and decriminalization has been a success for the state's tax base. Colorado collected more than $6 million in tax revenue in the first two months of 2014, and state legislators expect the value to multiply substantially by the middle of 2015. This projection has led to a planned marijuana money earmark of $40 million for the state's public schools.

Washington appears just as well off, as it estimates that the state will raise nearly $200 million over the next four years in marijuana taxes and fees.

This means states that lag behind in the land of criminal marijuana are potentially denying themselves access to an opportunity that could lead to balanced budgets.

On a related note, legalization could not only represent a potential tax windfall, but also a chance to relieve the immense burden that our country faces when managing its prison systems.

Since the start of the decade, our prisons have incarcerated nearly 12,000 federal prisoners and about 33,000 state prisoners for marijuana-related crimes.The average cost of each federal prisoner was about $29,000 in 2011 and every state prisoner cost taxpayers $31,286 as of 2010.

Our prisons are already overcrowded and underfunded, so it is irresponsible to continue imprisoning otherwise lawabiding citizens and contributing to an already difficult penal problem over something as minimal in consequence as pot distribution or use.

I'm not saying marijuana should be unregulated. Studies still point to marijuana having potentially harmful effects on teens' and young adults' brains, up to and including development of schizophrenia, and we should remain cautious until the dangers are more clear.

Legalizing marijuana across the country would mean enforcing appropriate age restrictions and consumption limits, just as states enforce regulations for alcohol and cigarettes - moderation is as important when using pot as it is for anything else - but ending the prohibition on marijuana use has been a long time coming.

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​3 reasons recreational marijuana should be legal in all 50 states - The Business Journals

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Parents, grandparents and other adults told me that marijuana use could kill me - the same advice that many young people heard. My middle school health courses equated marijuana with crack, PCP and cocaine as hard street drugs.

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 I think we should support Minimum wage increase. There’s too many people who struggles in life due to expenses that the average minimum wage salary can’t afford. Google states that minimum wage increased to $9.84 on January 1, 2018. Voters passed Proposition 206 in 2016 to schedule a series of wage increases starting with $10.00/hour in 2017, $10.50 in 2018, $11.00 in 2019, $12.00 in 2020 and every year afterwards will be tied to inflation. There is also a debate currently going on about raising minimum wage from 10$ to 11-15 dollars.

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 I think we should support Minimum wage increase. There’s too many people who struggles in life due to expenses that the average minimum wage salary can’t afford. Google states that minimum wage increased to $9.84 on January 1, 2018. Voters passed Proposition 206 in 2016 to schedule a series of wage increases starting with $10.00/hour in 2017, $10.50 in 2018, $11.00 in 2019, $12.00 in 2020 and every year afterwards will be tied to inflation. There is also a debate currently going on about raising minimum wage from 10$ to 11-15 dollars.

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he was wrong because an m16 can shoot 750 rounds per minute and it is identical to the ar 15

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immigration laws are racist. It isn't fair at all. It's sad to see the president against mexican immigration, however he fully allows european immigration.

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BOSTON - Lawyers suing President Donald Trump over his decision to end special protections shielding certain immigrants from deportation are seeking unaired footage from his reality TV show "The Apprentice" to try to bolster their case alleging the move was racially motivated, the attorneys said Wednesday.

Lawyers for Civil Rights, which sued Trump in February, has issued subpoenas to MGM Holdings Inc. and Trump Productions LLC demanding any footage shot during the production of the show in which Trump "uses racial and/or ethnic slurs" or "makes remarks concerning race, nationality and/or ethnic background."

Former White House staffer and fellow reality-TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed without evidence in a book released in August, "Unhinged," that a tape exists of the president using the N-word on the reality show's set.

Trump has denied the existence of such tapes, tweeting that the show's producer told him "there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa."

"I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have," Trump said.

The case filed in Boston's federal court centers on the Trump administration's decision to end temporary protected status for thousands of immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras. Temporary protected status provides safe havens for people from countries experiencing armed conflicts, natural disasters and other challenges.

Lawyers for Civil Rights says in the lawsuit that Trump's move to rescind the program was rooted in animus against immigrants of color, citing comments he made on the campaign trial and in office.

"Access to these videotapes will help further demonstrate that Defendant Trump holds racially biased views that impact his policy and decision making," attorney Oren Nimni said. The subpoenas also seek any relevant outtakes, audio clips and transcripts made during production of the show.

An MGM lawyer and White House officials didn't immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

A federal judge in July denied Trump's request to throw out the lawsuit and rejected the administration's bid to remove Trump as a defendant in the case.

In a different case in California, another federal judge last month issued a temporary injunction that bars the Trump administration from ending the protections, saying there is evidence that president "harbors an animus against non-white, non-European aliens which influenced his ... decision to end the TPS designation

The Trump administration is appealing that ruling.

Pressure on producers of the "The Apprentice" to release unaired footage of the show intensified during the 2016 presidential campaign after The Washington Post published a 2005 "Access Hollywood" recording of Trump boasting about aggressively groping women.

MGM, which owns "The Apprentice," said at the time that it couldn't unilaterally release any unaired, archived material because of contractual obligations. The show's producer, Mark Burnett, also said he didn't have the ability or right to release footage.

A former contestant on "The Apprentice" who has accused Trump of unwanted groping and kissing has also sought footage through a lawsuit against the president, but it's unclear whether she has received any.

The subpoena issued by Summer Zervos' attorney in May sought any "Apprentice" material that features Zervos, or Trump talking about her or discussing other female contestants in a sexual or inappropriate way.

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Lawyers seek 'Apprentice' tapes in Trump immigration suit for evidence of racism

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Lawyers for Civil Rights, which sued Trump in February, has issued subpoenas to MGM Holdings Inc. and Trump Productions LLC demanding any footage shot during the production of the show in which Trump "uses racial and/or ethnic slurs" or "makes remarks concerning race, nationality and/or ethnic background."

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An Ar 15 can only fire 400 rounds in one minute . So when Pat Davis

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People are failing to realize that letting teens have gun license and letting them buy guns is killing and hurting america very badly, School shooting gun gthreats mall shootings and church shootings shouldnt be happening its just shouldnt happen ever.I think you should be 24 and older to own a gun or have an license . It must be stopped pretty soon!!

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On Fox news on May 16, 2018 Tucker Carlson got into a fiery debate with a U.S. House candidate in New Mexico Pat Davis who aired an advertisement in which he said “f— the NRA,” as Carlson asked the candidate whether he actually knew gun control policy or the organization itself.

Pat Davis, who is seeking an Albuquerque-area seat, said the National Rifle Association’s “pro-gun policies resulted in dead children, dead mothers and dead fathers.”

Carlson asked if it degrades Davis, a former cop himself, that he used an obscenity in a political ad.

“Being polite hasn’t made our schools any safer or protected officers like I used to be,” Davis said. “Clearly this got the NRA’s attention.”…

After airing another ad in which Davis claimed an AR-15 can fire 150 rounds in 15 seconds, Carlson asked how that statistic was possible.

Davis said it could be done with certain additional equipment. He cited high-capacity

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I don't think slavery should have been a choice back then . The reason of that is because we all are human . I don't think white people should have had the say so over somebody's life . Slavery is a common subject for Black African Americans in today's world.

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Medical weed should be legalized because it can be used to prevent and treat the eye disease glaucoma, which damaged optic nerve and causing the loss of vision.

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Euthanasia is the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. This practice is illegal in most countries. I believe euthanasia should be legal, I believe everyone should have all rights to their own bodies. People should have the choice to die quickly and painlessly when in a terminal situation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/problems.shtml

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https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article221635165.html
This shows that we need to give adultss at the age of 20 and older and to give the guns to them after they have the responsibility to handle a gun.

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Right to Health Care ProCon.org

Should all Americans have the right (be entitled) to health care? Pros and Cons of right to health care.

procon

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Animal testing is cruel and should be banned.  It is immoral and causes the animals pain.  http://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/what-animal-testing

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Minimum wage should increase more often because the rate at which they increase minimum wage is too slow. The rate that they increase it doesn't increase as much as inflation does.

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https://injury.research.chop.edu/violence-prevention-initiative/types-violence-involving-youth/gun-violence/gun-violence-facts-and#.W-xUZ4FKjnE

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I don't think abortions should be legal. You are killing a child. Even if you dont think you are ready for a child, there are other options instead of just killing them.

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https://www.sofi.com/7-facts-you-didnt-know-about-student-loan-debt/

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The person that is physically carrying the child should have the option to terminate the pregnancy if wanted. People capable of carrying children should have control over their bodies, no matter what situation. Using the argument that they should only be legal in a medical situation or the end result of a sexual assault is the equivalent of saying that people should only have control over their bodies if they are in an emergency.

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Gun control is a big issue in today's world. It should be controlled better by gun sellers it should be more restrictive.

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Although women should be able to make their own choices, abortion shouldn't be legal.  Taking away an innocent child's life isn't right.

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wome should have the option of haveing safe abortions without being bullied by the other side (pro-life)because it's better if a women who knows that she can't take care of child and believes that an abortion is the right step instead of putting that child in to forster care or put that child up for adoption

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animal testing should be banned everywhere. Even though it helps humans, there are always other ways to test products not using animals.

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We need more strict  about gun control about gun control why because to mini people is getting shot.

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Animal Testing has been banned in some states and should be illegal in all other states too. Peta is an organAization that is trying to stop animal testing for good. The animal populations is decreasing everyday due to animal testing. The animal race is just like the human race, we all want to live. If humans have the audacity to test and 🤬 animals then they should have that same audacity to test and 🤬 humans. The link attached to this post allows you to donate to Peta so they can stop animal cruelty.

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ALL Animals Deserve Our Love, Protection, and Respect

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I just donated to PETA to power its vital work for animals-will you join me?

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Animal Testing is wrong.  Even though it is used to help develop products for humans, there are other ways to test products. There are test tubes with human DNA to test to see how the product will react and several other ways.  Animal testing tortures animals not for human necessities ,but for human luxury.

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I believe that 🤬 should be legal for medical purposes plus its not bad for your health at all. And weed is like used illegally but its not bad for usage it only kills your brain cells and makes you high

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According to HealthResearchFunding, women who have had abortions are three times more likely to commit suicide than women of childbearing age who have not had abortions. They are 81% more likely to have mental health issues than other women. Teens who have had abortions are ten times more likely to attempt suicide than teens who have not had an abortion. To put that in perspective, eighteen percent of abortions in the U.S. are teenagers—that’s almost one fifth of all abortions in the country.

-L.

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Terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are automatically polarizing. The moment you choose to share your beliefs about abortion with another is often the moment they stop listening. The issue has been hashed and rehashed. It's all too easy to forget that we are talking to real people.
Many of the very women we speak with have had abortions, are abortion-survivors, and may be unexpectedly pregnant now and wondering what they should do.
Every day we are surrounded by unknown stories which may lead to beliefs we don't agree with. If we choose to look at those we disagree with in love, we find there are usually a few things we can agree on-such as the goodness of health, equality, and social well-being. When we start on shared ground, we can often have a productive and loving conversation about abortion.

Below, are three surprising abortion facts that should be of concern to everyone, no matter your political or religious background.
1. Abortions are disproportionately being performed on Black and Hispanic babies.
According to the CDC, the rate of abortions among Black and Hispanic women is significantly higher than that among white women, meaning that a disproportionate number of the next generation is being lost to abortions.

What's even scarier is that this is what the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, would have wanted. A known eugenicist, Sanger wrote about speaking at a Klu Klux Klan meeting in her autobiography, and notoriously wrote of her racist inclinations in letters to friends.

We can adopt a willful blindness towards this fact, but we cannot pretend it is of no consequence.
Get more pro-life news, straight to your inbox 2. Abortion preys on the poor.
Women living at or below the federal poverty line are five times more likely to have an abortion than women living above it, as found by the Guttmacher Institute.

The availability of contraception and abortion over the last forty years has made an unintended pregnancy the woman's responsibility, rather than a shared responsibility by both parents. This has decreased the motivation for marriage in the event of an unintended pregnancy, which in turn has decreased the risk of casual sex, ultimately resulting in an increase in the number of unintended pregnancies.

This not only results in higher abortion rates among poor women, but it also results in more single-mom households, increasing a woman's cost of living and making her poorer. This is a deeply entrenched cycle that illuminates the destructive nature of abortion in the lives of the poor.
3. Women who have had abortions are significantly more prone to mental illness and self-harm.
According to HealthResearchFunding, women who have had abortions are three times more likely to commit suicide than women of childbearing age who have not had abortions. They are 81% more likely to have mental health issues than other women. Teens who have had abortions are ten times more likely to attempt suicide than teens who have not had an abortion. To put that in perspective, eighteen percent of abortions in the U.S. are teenagers-that's almost one fifth of all abortions in the country.

These statistics are frightening and pose a serious health concern to women. Mainstream culture is finally talking about the reality of depression and other mental illnesses, but if we are truly serious about helping people, we have to be honest about the cause.

These facts about abortion are deeply unsettling, and we should not only make others aware of them but hope and pray to change them. As we seek to share the truth about life and to fight the evils that wage war against it, we should remember that we too are being taught every day to see and share the truth about abortion with others in that humble and unifying spirit.
Get more pro-life news, straight to your inbox

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3 Horrifying Facts that Prove Abortion is Bad for Women - Save the Storks

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Terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are automatically polarizing. The moment you choose to share your beliefs about abortion with another is often the moment they stop listening. The issue has been hashed and rehashed. It's all too easy to forget that we are talking to real people.

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We need more strict gun laws
-C.T

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Started in August of 2016 they protested against systematic oppression

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I think student loans shouldn't be as high as it is.  Overall students loans start around like 30k or something around that.

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I think student loans shouldn't be as high as it is.  Overall students loans start around like 30k or something around that.

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ovarll

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With students graduating with an average student loan debt of nearly $30,000, many are left wondering how they'll pay off their student loans.

Students have to sort all of the interest rates, payments, scheduling and other, finer details just to find out how much their monthly payments will be. It's hard to plan when you have no idea what your average payment will amount to.

If you don't fully understand the details of your loans, it can add more stress on top of the fact that you actually have to pay them off. Looking at that figure as one lump sum can be intimidating, and frankly, a little frightening.

But don't worry. Credible created a detailed guide of what the actual cost of a $30k loan is on various payment plans. Getting a glimpse into the average student loan payment can give you a clearer picture of what you actually owe, and what it will take to begin paying the loans back.

Let's get started.

Standard Repayment Plan

$30,000 Principal Amount; $50 Minimum Payment

Standard repayment plans are the default status on loans, unless otherwise specified. Standard repayment plans have minimum monthly payments, usually around $50. With the average student loan debt of $30,000, interest on a loan can add up quickly, so you may want to pay more than the minimum due.

Your monthly payment and total amount paid over the course of the loan will depend on your interest rate. Let's look at some standard interest rates.

Federal Direct Student Loan, 4% interest rate - Average monthly payments

At this interest rate, your monthly payment would come to $304 per month. The total interest paid over the course of the loan would be $6,448, bringing the total amount paid to $36,448. The repayment period on standard loans is 10 years, or 120 months. Let's see another example with a higher interest rate.

Federal Direct Student Loan, 6% interest rate - Average monthly payments

At this interest rate, your monthly payment would come to $333 per month. The total interest paid over the course of the loan would be $9,967, bringing the total amount paid to $39,967. The difference in total amount paid between these two loans would be $3519 over a 120-month period. That's an extra $29 per month. In order to have an equivalent total amount paid compared to the first example, you would have to pay $2,650 towards the loan initially before interest applies.

Income-Based Repayment Plan

$30,000 Principal Amount; 4% Interest Rate

The income-based repayment (IBR) plans are only available to qualifying graduates. This repayment plan takes a percentage of your discretionary income and uses it to payoff the loan.

The monthly payment will depend on your income. For those who are new borrowers, they will pay up to 10% of their discretionary income but never more than the 10-year standard repayment plan monthly amount. The median income for a college graduate in the United States is around $47,000 per year. Let's look at two different incomes.

Average monthly payments on $47,000 per year income

At this income rate, your monthly payment would be between $245 and $304 per month. The total interest paid over the course of the loan would be $7,141, bringing the total amount paid to $37,141. The repayment period in this case would be 128 months, or 10 years and 8 months. Compared to the first standard repayment plan example, you would be paying a little less per month but a little more overall.

Average monthly payments $35,000 per year income

At this income rate, your monthly payment would be between $145 and $304 per month. The total interest paid over the course of the loan would be $11,366, bringing the total amount paid to $41,366. The repayment period in this case would be 177 months, or 14 years and 9 months.

This is an additional $4,225 in total compared to the higher income example and $4,918 compared to the standard repayment example. Although this plan costs more in the long-run, it may be a better option for those with low income. If your income is too low, you may not be able to afford the standard repayment plan monthly amount.

Average Student Loan Payments - Key Takeaways

In conclusion, different payment plans are clearly better for different borrowers personal situations and it's most important to understand the different options before choosing a path.

A good rule of thumb is that the longer you stretch out your loan payments, the more you'll repay in total (see " Why WOULDN'T I want to lower my monthly student loan payments? ").

Some borrowers may have so much debt that they qualify for loan forgiveness after 10, 20, or 25 years of payments. But loan forgiveness granted after 20 or 25 years in an income-driven repayment program is currently considered taxable income, so be sure to factor that into your calculations (loan forgiveness granted after 10 years of payments under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is not taxed).

For borrowers who don't expect to qualify for loan forgiveness, refinancing with a private lender to reduce your interest rate can save thousands of dollars over the life of your loan.

For more on government repayment plans that are available to you, including IBR, PAYE and REPAYE, and refinancing options with private lenders, see:
*All calculations were made using the Credible student loan calculator. See you much you can save by refinancing with Credible. Check your rate in less than 90 seconds ->

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Average Student Loan Debt: Monthly Payments For $30K Loan | Credible

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With students graduating with an average student loan debt of nearly $30,000, many are left wondering how they'll pay off their student loans. Students have to sort all of the interest rates, payments, scheduling and other, finer details just to find out how much their monthly payments will be.

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Minimum wage should be Increased because the money  they make per hour is too low for anyone to live on.

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History of Minimum Wage
The federal minimum wage, introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was initially set at $0.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. Most states plus DC have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage, though several states do not have minimum wage laws (which means workers in those states default to the federal minimum wage). Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Raising the federal minimum wage would not only allow minimum wage workers to afford basic living expenses, but would also reduce income, gender, and racial inequalities.

The current minimum wage is not high enough to allow people to afford housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, "In 2022, a full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $25.82 on average to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S. This... is $18.57 higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.... A full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $21.25 on average in order to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home in the U.S."

Further, 35% of families with full-time year-round employment do not earn enough to pay for essentials including food and childcare. 59% of Hispanic families, 52% of Black families, 25% of white families, and 23% of Asian families that work full-time year-round cannot cover basic needs. Overall, families would need to earn $11 more an hour to cover basic costs, with Black and Hispanic families needing $12 more an hour.

Approximately 91% of workers who would benefit from a raised minimum wage are over 20 years old, with 68% over the age of 25. Most are the primary wage earners for their families, averaging about 52% of their family's income, and most are women and people of color. The current federal minimum wage prevents these individuals and families from meeting basic needs like shelter and food, as well as creating significant obstacles to healthcare, finances for an emergency, and other expenses such as car upkeep.

Increasing the minimum wage would not only bring relief to workers struggling to make ends meet, it would also raise the incomes of people who make slightly more than minimum wage. The Brookings Institution found that increasing the minimum wage would result in higher wages for the 3.7 million people earning minimum wage and up to 35 million workers who make up to 150% of the federal minimum wage.

The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) found that an increase to just $10.10 an hour would raise wages for 28 million Americans-about nine million of those due to the ripple effect.
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Pro 2

Raising the minimum wage to match inflation and productivity would benefit the economy by increasing consumer activity and spurring job growth while lowering the federal deficit.

As journalist Megan Cerullo summarizes, "The federal minimum wage of $7.25 buys less today than it has at any point over the past 66 years.... The current value of the minimum wage in real dollars is at its lowest level since February 1956, when the lowest U.S. wage was 75 cents - the equivalent of $7.19 in June 2022 dollars." Raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation would ensure that low-wage workers could adopt a standard of living commensurate with the current economy.

Further, while the estimates of how much the minimum wage should be increased vary, many economists agree that if the wage had kept pace with rising productivity and incomes, it would be higher than the current $7.25 an hour. [14] [17] [18]

With an economic boom and more securely employed workers, the federal deficit would decrease. According to James K. Galbraith, Professor of Government at the University of Texas in Austin, "[b]ecause payroll- and income-tax revenues would rise [as a result of an increase in the minimum wage], the federal deficit would come down."

Further, raising the minimum wage would help reduce the federal budget deficit "by lowering spending on public assistance programs and increasing tax revenue. Since firms are allowed to pay poverty-level wages to 3.6 million people - 5 percent of the workforce - these workers must rely on Federal income support programs. This means that taxpayers have been subsidizing businesses, whose profits have risen to record levels over the past 30 years," according to Aaron Pacitti, Associate Professor of Economics at Siena College.
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Pro 3

Increasing the minimum wage would have numerous social benefits including reducing poverty and crime, and increasing school attendance and the healthy population.
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Con 1

Raising the minimum wage would increase housing and consumer goods costs for everyone and greatly disadvantage minimum wage workers.

Raising the minimum wage could decrease employee benefits and increase tax payments, further costing the employees. According to James Sherk, MA, Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a single mother working full time and earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would be over $260 a month worse off if the minimum wage were raised to $10.10: "While her market income rises by $494, she loses $71 in EITC [earned income tax credit] refunds, pays $37 more in payroll taxes and $45 more in state income taxes. She also loses $88 in food stamp benefits and $528 in child-care subsidies."

Raising the minimum wage also creates more jobs for more skilled workers, disadvantaging teenagers, young adults, and those with less education and experience. If employers have to pay an employee more, they will expect the employee to have a more experienced skill set, essentially removing the job from the tier of jobs available to minimum wage workers.
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Con 2

Raising the minimum wage, instead of allowing the free market to determine an appropriate rate, will decrease employee compensation, while forcing businesses to close, use automation, or outsource jobs.

Increasing the minimum wage increases costs for businesses. If a business cannot or will not support the increased cost, the first method of cost correction is to cut hours or lay off employees. Researchers found that "For every $1 increase in the minimum wage, ...the total number of workers scheduled to work each week increased by 27.7%, while the average number of hours each worker worked per week decreased [sic] by 20.8%. For an average store in California, these changes translated into four extra workers per week and five fewer hours per worker per week - which meant that the total wage compensation of an average minimum wage worker in a California store actually fell by 13.6%." The decrease in hours also meant erratic schedules that are difficult for employees to maintain and a decrease in eligibility for benefits such as retirement packages and healthcare.

Businesses that cannot or will not pay a higher minimum wage may also turn to more robots and automated processes to replace service employees. Oxford University researchers explain "robots are already performing many simple service tasks such as vacuuming, mopping, lawn mowing, and gutter cleaning" and that "commercial service robots are now able to perform more complex tasks in food preparation, health care, commercial cleaning, and elderly care."
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Con 3

Raising the federal minimum wage would exacerbate income disparities and the cycle of poverty.

Cost of living varies wildly in the United States. For example, living in New York, California, and Hawaii costs significantly more than living in Mississippi, Kansas, or Montana. If the federal government raises the minimum wage significantly, the wage will be proportionately much higher in lower income states, meaning employers will not be able to afford the costs of paying employees and residents will not be able to afford the cost of living increases necessary to make up the difference. Small rural communities would especially suffer from the disparity.
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Did You Know?

1. America's minimum wage law was signed in 1938. The minimum wage was set at 25 cents, which is equivalent to $5.19 in 2022 dollars.

2. 44% of minimum wage earners are under 25 years old.

3. 30 states and DC have set minimum wages above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. As of Jan. 12, 2023, the highest is DC, at $16.50 an hour, followed by Washington state at $15.74 an hour.

4. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.

5. The first state minimum wage laws, introduced between 1912 and the early 1930s, only covered women and minors. The first to cover men was introduced in 1937 in Oklahoma.

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Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?

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Proponents say raising the wage will increase economic activity. Opponents say raising the wage would force businesses to lay off employees.

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I think that we should start thinking about the next generation. Cause if we keep making plastic ,dumping trash , using nation resouses,and factorys.

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I think women shouldn't get an abortion. It can cause many issues later in life and it's killing a child. A unborn baby shouldn't have to go through that. Think about it what if it was you?

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with health

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I believe 🤬 should be legal it's less harmless than cigarettes and vapes. As in cigarettes can full your lungs with tar and the  smoke can cause cancer and vape can freeze your lungs and cause you to get lung cancer faster. 🤬 can also help with depression. So I believe 🤬 should be legal.

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A large-scale national study suggests low to moderate use of marijuana is less harmful to users' lungs than exposure to tobacco, even though the two substances contain many of the same components.

This comprehensive study, led by UCSF and University of Alabama at Birmingham, collected data from more than 5,000 U.S. adults for more than 20 years.

Smoking cigarettes can cause significant lung damage, including respiratory symptoms, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. It accounts for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one in every five deaths, each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Data for the long-term effects of marijuana use on the pulmonary system has been scarce until now.

Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH

"We found exactly what we thought we would find in relation to tobacco exposure: a consistent loss of lung function with increasing exposure," said the paper's lead author, Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH, associate professor in the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at UCSF. "We were, however, surprised that we found such a different pattern of association with marijuana exposure."

In a paper published today in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers analyzed the relationship between current and lifetime exposure to marijuana and pulmonary function. The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study collected medical data from 5,115 men and women in four U.S. cities from 1985 to 2006.

They measured air flow rate - the speed in which a person can blow out air - and lung volume, which is the amount of air a person is capable of holding, typically about six liters of air for an adult male. Lung function was measured using a common medical device called a spirometer that measures air flow when the participant breathes in and out.

"Essentially with tobacco, the more you use, the more loss you have with both of the indicators, air flow rate and lung volume," said the paper's last author Stefan Kertesz, MD, MSc, associate professor in the Division of Preventive Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine and the Birmingham VA Medical Center. "There's a straight-line relationship: the more you use, the more you lose."

The same was not true with marijuana use. Air flow rate increased rather than decreased with increased exposure to marijuana up to a certain level.

"An important factor that helps explain the difference in effects from these two substances is the amount of each that is typically smoked," Pletcher said. "Tobacco users typically smoke ten to 20 cigarettes/day, and some smoke much more than that. Marijuana users, on average, smoke only two to three times a month, so the typical exposure to marijuana is much lower than for tobacco."

"And marijuana is one where a lot of people dabble with it in their late teens and 20s, and some people continue with relatively low levels for a long period of time," Kertesz added.

Heavy Marijuana Use May Take Toll

Although there was a suggestion that very heavy use of marijuana might be taking a toll on the lungs, the researchers could not get reliable estimates of the effects of very heavy marijuana exposure, as such smokers were relatively rare in the study population.

All participants in the study began as young, healthy adults 18 to 30 years old from four communities: Oakland, Chicago, Minneapolis and Birmingham. They volunteered to be part of this long-term medical research study, agreeing that their data could be used to explore questions, including about tobacco and marijuana use.

Researchers believe the results can supplement the growing body of knowledge about beneficial aspects of low to moderate marijuana use in controlling pain, stimulating appetite, elevating mood and managing other chronic symptoms.

"Our findings suggest that occasional use of marijuana for these or other purposes may not be associated with adverse consequences on pulmonary function," Pletcher said. "On the other hand, our findings do suggest an accelerated decline in pulmonary function with heavier use - either very frequent use or frequent use over many years - and a resulting need for caution and moderation when marijuana use is considered."

Pletcher is the lead author of the paper; co-authors are Eric Vittinghoff, PhD, and Feng Lin, MS; of the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, of the Divison of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine; Stephen Sidney, MD, MPH, of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Oakland; Joshua Richman, MD, PhD, Monika Safford, MD, and Stefan Kertesz, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The study was supported by funds from the National Heart Lung Blood Institute.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.

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Marijuana Shown to Be Less Damaging to Lungs Than Tobacco

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A large-scale national study suggests low to moderate use of marijuana is less harmful to users' lungs than exposure to tobacco, even though the two substances contain many of the same components, according to a study led by UCSF and University of Alabama at Birmingham.

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Make people be healthy

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Racial stereotypes is something people get confused with because when some people see an African American man they probably think he's in a gang, he's gonna steal something those are stereotypes. Just because you see an African American man walking down the street doesn't mean he's gonna cause anything.  African American women are loud, have no class and people say they can't have nice things.  Actually they are not loud, they do have class, and they can have nice things. Racial stereotypes  is what you hear about African Americans, Mexicans,Koreans, Caucasians we all have stereotypes but doesn't mean you judge them from what you hear.

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I think everyone shouldn't have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to help them keep living. Because there are hundreds of people that die a day because of their health is at critical. There are more examples of health problems in this link for comment health problems because of the lack of healthcare in people's lives because they can't afford it.

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Physical Activity and Nutrition

Research indicates that staying physically active can help prevent or delay certain diseases, including some cancers, heart disease and diabetes, and also relieve depression and improve mood. Inactivity often accompanies advancing age, but it doesn't have to. Check with your local churches or synagogues, senior centers, and shopping malls for exercise and walking programs. Like exercise, your eating habits are often not good if you live and eat alone. It's important for successful aging to eat foods rich in nutrients and avoid the empty calories in candy and sweets.

Overweight and Obesity

Being overweight or obese increases your chances of dying from hypertension, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, dyslipidemia and endometrial, breast, prostate, and colon cancers. In-depth guides and practical advice about obesity are available from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Tobacco

Tobacco is the single greatest preventable cause of illness and premature death in the U.S. Tobacco use is now called "Tobacco dependence disease." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that smokers who try to quit are more successful when they have the support of their physician.

Substance Abuse

Substance abuse usually means drugs and alcohol. These are two areas we don't often associate with seniors, but seniors, like young people, may self-medicate using legal and illegal drugs and alcohol, which can lead to serious health consequences. In addition, seniors may deliberately or unknowingly mix medications and use alcohol. Because of our stereotypes about senior citizens, many medical people fail to ask seniors about possible substance abuse.

HIV/AIDS

Between 11 and 15% of U.S. AIDS cases occur in seniors over age 50. Between 1991 and 1996, AIDS in adults over 50 rose more than twice as fast as in younger adults. Seniors are unlikely to use condoms, have immune systems that naturally weaken with age, and HIV symptoms (fatigue, weight loss, dementia, skin rashes, swollen lymph nodes) are similar to symptoms that can accompany old age. Again, stereotypes about aging in terms of sexual activity and drug use keep this problem largely unrecognized. That's why seniors are not well represented in research, clinical drug trials, prevention programs and efforts at intervention.

Mental Health

Dementia is not part of aging. Dementia can be caused by disease, reactions to medications, vision and hearing problems, infections, nutritional imbalances, diabetes, and renal failure. There are many forms of dementia (including Alzheimer's Disease) and some can be temporary. With accurate diagnosis comes management and help. The most common late-in-life mental health condition is depression. If left untreated, depression in the elderly can lead to suicide. Here's a surprising fact: The rate of suicide is higher for elderly white men than for any other age group, including adolescents.

Injury and Violence

Among seniors, falls are the leading cause of injuries, hospital admissions for trauma, and deaths due to injury. One in every three seniors (age 65 and older) will fall each year. Strategies to reduce injury include exercises to improve balance and strength and medication review. Home modifications can help reduce injury. Home security is needed to prevent intrusion. Home-based fire prevention devices should be in place and easy to use. People aged 65 and older are twice as likely to die in a home fire as the general population.

Environmental Quality

Even though pollution affects all of us, government studies have indicated that low-income, racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in areas where they face environmental risks. Compared to the general population, a higher proportion of elderly are living just over the poverty threshold.

Immunization

Influenza and pneumonia and are among the top 10 causes of death for older adults. Emphasis on Influenza vaccination for seniors has helped. Pneumonia remains one of the most serious infections, especially among women and the very old.

Access to Health Care

Seniors frequently don't monitor their health as seriously as they should. While a shortage of geriatricians has been noted nationwide, URMC has one of the largest groups of geriatricians and geriatric specialists of any medical community in the country. Your access to health care is as close as URMC, offering a menu of services at several hospital settings, including the VA Hospital in Canandaigua, in senior housing, and in your community.

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Research indicates that staying physically active can help prevent or delay certain diseases, including some cancers, heart disease and diabetes, and also relieve depression and improve mood. Inactivity often accompanies advancing age, but it doesn't have to.

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This is a widely regarded topic, We need to put more attention to

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California has some of the strictest gun regulations in the nation. But a mass shooting in the state this week has prompted many to weigh what more can be done. Credit Credit Andrew Burton for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES - After a mass killing in Santa Barbara in 2014, California passed a law that let police officers and family members seek restraining orders to seize guns from troubled people. A year later, a shooting rampage in San Bernardino led to voters approving a ballot proposition to outlaw expanded magazines for guns and require background checks for buying ammunition.

The state has also banned assault weapons and regulates ammunition sales - all part of a wave of gun regulation that began a quarter century ago with a mass murder at a San Francisco law firm.

California may have the toughest gun control laws in the nation, but that still did not prevent the latest mass killing - a shooting on Wednesday that left 12 people dead at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks.

The community of Thousand Oaks is just starting to grieve its losses, and investigators are still combing through the background of the gunman, who was found dead after the shooting. But gun control activists and politicians in the state are already weighing what more can be done, and whether existing measures could have prevented the killing.

The attack came just as California elected a new governor, Gavin Newsom, this week, and eyes are on him to see how he responds.

Mr. Newsom is seen as even more aggressive on gun restrictions than his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, and some experts say the state could see the passage of even tougher laws. As lieutenant governor, Mr. Newsom led the effort after the San Bernardino killings to pass the ballot proposition on high-capacity magazines and background checks - a measure that has not been enacted yet because of a court challenge.

With Mr. Brown out of the state this week, and Mr. Newsom serving as acting governor, the mass shooting became the first crisis he faced after being elected Tuesday night.

"The response is not just prayers," Mr. Newsom said at a news conference on Thursday in Sacramento. "The response cannot just be excuses. The response sure as hell cannot be more guns."

Survivors and family members of those who have been killed in gun violence are also calling for stronger measures. On Thursday, Susan Orfanos, whose son survived a mass shooting in Las Vegas last year only to die in the Borderline, told a New York Times reporter: "He didn't come home last night, and the two words I want you to write are: gun control. Right now - so that no one else goes through this. Can you do that? Can you do that for me? Gun control."

Image

Victims of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif., were honored at a vigil this week. Credit Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

As California has become more liberal in recent decades, and especially after President Trump was elected, gun control is one of several issues - along with climate change, immigration and health care - that have placed the state firmly in opposition to the federal government. In the wake of mass killings, the state's political leaders often find themselves pushing for more gun control within California while speaking out against the federal government's unwillingness to take up the issue, and against the National Rifle Association's positions.

"The National Rifle Association - I'll say this - is bankrupt, morally, and they need to be held to account to their rhetoric and their actions," Mr. Newsom said.

He said of his own state: "California will do its job. I have all the confidence in the world. We have an extraordinary Legislature; they get it. They've gotten a lot done on gun safety, and they've got a governor who wants to raise the bar."

Kevin de León, the former Democratic State Senate leader who on Tuesday lost his bid for the United States Senate to the incumbent, Dianne Feinstein, wrote on Twitter this week: "Congress's great shame is their willingness to give the N.R.A. an outsized voice on how we enact gun safety. We will keep marching, legislating, advocating, and pushing Congress until they finally deliver gun safety laws that will keep our communities protected."

Mr. Newsom did not this week offer specific new measures that he would push for, but he did say that he would have signed some gun control bills that Gov. Jerry Brown had vetoed in recent years. Among those were bills that would have expanded restraining orders, to allow co-workers, school employees and mental health providers to ask courts to take away guns from someone.

Even with the country's toughest gun laws, California has still had the most deaths from mass shootings since 1982, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones - 128 people killed. Florida, with roughly half the population of California, has the second most deaths from mass shootings over that time, 118 killed.

But California also has the highest population in the country, and no one knows how many mass shootings may have been prevented by the gun laws already in place in the state.

"What matters is not just the count but the rate," said Garen Wintemute, an emergency room physician who also leads the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center, which was created in the aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre to study how to prevent mass shootings. "And California's rate is about half that of Florida's."

Most gun deaths are not from mass shootings, and the focus of the gun control movement is on reducing the overall number of gun deaths - in homicides, suicides and accidents. By that measure, California has been successful: It has cut its gun-death rate in half over the last 25 years, and California is among the states with the lowest rates, with 7.9 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2016, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite its reputation as tough on guns, there are pockets of support for easing controls, especially in rural, inland areas, and there are still plenty of gun owners in the state. California has the second most registered guns in the country - more than 340,000, which is second to Texas, according to statistics published by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But on a per-capita basis, California ranks low, 44th, with 8.71 guns per 1,000 people.

Gavin Newsom, who was elected governor of California this week, faced his first crisis as the state's chief executive. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Ian D. Long, the gunman in the Thousand Oaks shooting, and a Marine who had served in Afghanistan, drew the attention of police officers in April when they were called to his house for a domestic disturbance. Mental health specialists were called in, and discussed with him his military service and possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder, but determined he was not dangerous enough to detain him and force him to receive treatment.

The episode though raised the question of whether someone should have tried to keep him away from guns by seeking a restraining order. "My issue with Thousand Oaks is implementing the gun violence restraining order we already have in place," said Allison Anderman, managing attorney at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group in San Francisco. "The shooter was undeniably a candidate for a gun violence restraining order and for whatever reason the Ventura County Sheriff's Department did not try to obtain one."

The predecessor of Giffords, the Legal Community Against Gun Violence, was founded in the wake of another mass shooting in California, the so-called 101 California Street Shooting in 1993, when a man armed with semiautomatic guns killed eight people at a law firm in San Francisco. That shooting, long before the massacres in Columbine, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; or Parkland, Fla., prompted a flurry of gun control activism in California, and played a large part in the enactment of the federal assault weapons ban in 1994, which is no longer in effect.

Mr. Long also apparently used an extended magazine on his Glock 21 .45-caliber handgun, a device that California voters banned with the approval in 2016 of Proposition 63. Mr. Newsom, who led the effort, called the initiative "historic progress to reduce gun violence." But the measure has stalled in the courts after a lawsuit from the N.R.A.

In the aftermath of the Thousand Oaks shooting, activists are pushing to expand background checks and widen the circle of people who can seek gun restraining orders. Dr. Wintemute, the emergency room physician, said he was pushing to make a history of alcohol abuse a criterion to prohibit someone from buying a gun. "I think we'll see interest in tightening up California's background check procedures," he said.

In a column about the shooting published in The Sacramento Bee, Dr. Wintemute wrote: "Unfortunately, many background checks are inadequate. Information is not reported or is mishandled; legal ambiguities can make it difficult to know whether events are, in fact, prohibiting. And even where background checks are required, many people avoid them."

In 2014, Bob Weiss's daughter, Veronika, was killed in the shooting in Santa Barbara County, in the community of Isla Vista. His home is walking distance from the Borderline bar in Thousand Oaks.

"I think for most of the country, it's routine now," he said. "People die in Pittsburgh, a week or later 12 die here, next week 12 people get shot somewhere else. We've been desensitized. Even though it's getting worse, we've all just come to accept it. I don't accept it."

Mr. Weiss attended a vigil in Thousand Oaks on Thursday night.

He said he favored stricter gun laws, and saw parallels between the shooting in Thousand Oaks and the one that took his daughter's life just a few years ago.

"Just like what happened in Isla Vista, they had contact with this person and they deemed him to be no risk to the public," he said. "They didn't even ask if he had a gun, which is the most basic question you should ask someone who is displaying these violent tendencies."

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the rate of gun deaths in California in 2016. The state had 7.9 deaths per 100,000 residents, not per 1,000 residents.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: California Already Tough On Guns, but Rampage Spurs a Reassessment. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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California Is Already Tough on Guns. After a Mass Shooting, Some Wonder if It's Enough

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LOS ANGELES - After a mass killing in Santa Barbara in 2014, California passed a law that let police officers and family members seek restraining orders to seize guns from troubled people. A year later, a shooting rampage in San Bernardino led to voters approving a ballot proposition to outlaw expanded magazines for guns and require background checks for buying ammunition.

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🤬 do become addiction and its not really a choice but certain addictions are choices. You choose to try 🤬.  🤬 can mess with your self control and affect your brain. and once you get addicted to shooting up you can die from it. long term 🤬 can affect you're learning, judgement, stress, memory, and the way you act. drug addictions can be controlled with rehab but it can cause relapse and sometimes it can cause you to want more when you come off of it. 🤬 is not easy to stop but it is something that needs to be prevented its dangerous and is very harmful to people and more importantly you family and yourself. be careful with your decisions you make.

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abortion wemen

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We are all human. It doesn't matter what sexuality you are. All lives matter. What if u had a son or daughter? Would you be fine with it?

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The prevailing professional opinion is that a parent's sexual orientation has nothing to do with his or her ability to be a good parent. The nation's leading child welfare, psychological and children's health organizations also have issued policy or position statements declaring that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child. Many also have condemned discrimination based on sexual orientation in adoption, custody and other parenting situations and called for equal rights for all parents and children. Further, several of these organizations also have issued statements declaring that a parent's gender identity and/or physical appearance is irrelevant to his or her abilities as a parent.

Read what professional organizations say about LGBTQ parenting:
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry approved the following statement in support of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer parenting in 2009: (1999)
"All decisions relating to custody and parental rights should rest on the interest of the child. There is no evidence to suggest or support that parents who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are per se superior or inferior from or deficient in parenting skills, child-centered concerns, and parent-child attachments when compared with heterosexual parents. There is no credible evidence that shows that a parent's sexual orientation or gender identity will adversely affect the development of the child.
American Academy of Family Physicians The American Academy of Family Physicians adopted the following position statement at its October 2002 meeting:
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer individuals historically have faced more rigorous scrutiny than heterosexual people regarding their rights to be or become parents. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry opposes any discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity against individuals in regard to their rights as custodial, foster, or adoptive parents."
American Academy of Pediatrics
"RESOLVED, That the AAFP establish policy and be supportive of legislation which promotes a safe and nurturing environment, including psychological and legal security, for all children, including those of adoptive parents, regardless of the parents' sexual orientation."
American Bar Association (1995, 1999 and 2003) American Medical Association
The American Academy of Pediatrics issued the following statement in support of gay and lesbian parenting and called for equal access to co-parenting and second-parent adoption rights for gay and lesbian parents in February 2002:

"Children deserve to know that their relationships with both of their parents are stable and legally recognized. This applies to all children, whether their parents are of the same or opposite sex. The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes that a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual.1-9 When 2 adults participate in parenting a child, they and the child deserve the serenity that comes with legal recognition.

"Children born or adopted into families headed by partners who are of the same sex usually have only 1 biologic or adoptive legal parent. The other partner in a parental role is called the "coparent" or "second parent." Because these families and children need the permanence and security that are provided by having 2 fully sanctioned and legally defined parents, the Academy supports the legal adoption of children by coparents or second parents. Denying legal parent status through adoption to coparents or second parents prevents these children from enjoying the psychologic and legal security that comes from having 2 willing, capable, and loving parents.

"Several states have considered or enacted legislation sanctioning second-parent adoption by partners of the same sex. In addition, legislative initiatives assuring legal status equivalent to marriage for gay and lesbian partners, such as the law approving civil unions in Vermont, can also attend to providing security and permanence for the children of those partnerships.

"Many states have not yet considered legislative actions to ensure the security of children whose parents are gay or lesbian. Rather, adoption has been decided by probate or family courts on a case-by-case basis. Case precedent is limited. It is important that a broad ethical mandate exist nationally that will guide the courts in providing necessary protection for children through coparent adoption.

"Coparent or second-parent adoption protects the child's right to maintain continuing relationships with both parents. The legal sanction provided by coparent adoption accomplishes the following:

"1. Guarantees that the second parent's custody rights and responsibilities will be protected if the first parent were to die or become incapacitated. Moreover, second-parent adoption protects the child's legal right of relationships with both parents. In the absence of coparent adoption, members of the family of the legal parent, should he or she become incapacitated, might successfully challenge the surviving coparent's rights to continue to parent the child, thus causing the child to lose both parents.

"2. Protects the second parent's rights to custody and visitation if the couple separates. Likewise, the child's right to maintain relationships with both parents after separation, viewed as important to a positive outcome in separation or divorce of heterosexual parents, would be protected for families with gay or lesbian parents.

"3. Establishes the requirement for child support from both parents in the event of the parents' separation.

"4. Ensures the child's eligibility for health benefits from both parents.

"5. Provides legal grounds for either parent to provide consent for medical care and to make education, health care, and other important decisions on behalf of the child.

"6. Creates the basis for financial security for children in the event of the death of either parent by ensuring eligibility to all appropriate entitlements, such as Social Security survivors benefits.

"On the basis of the acknowledged desirability that children have and maintain a continuing relationship with 2 loving and supportive parents, the Academy recommends that pediatricians do the following: Be familiar with professional literature regarding gay and lesbian parents and their children; Support the right of every child and family to the financial, psychologic, and legal security that results from having legally recognized parents who are committed to each other and to the welfare of their children; Advocate for initiatives that establish permanency through coparent or second-parent adoption for children of same-sex partners through the judicial system, legislation, and community education."
American Psychiatric Association (1997 and 2002) American Psychoanalytic Association
The American Bar Association adopted the following position statement in Aug. 2003:

"RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association supports state and territorial laws and court decisions that permit the establishment of legal parent-child relationships through joint adoptions and second-parent adoptions by unmarried persons who are functioning as a child's parents when such adoptions are in the best interests of the child."

The American Bar Association adopted the following position statement in Feb. 1999:

"RESOLVED, that the American Bar Association supports the enactment of laws and implementation of public policy that provide that sexual orientation shall not be a bar to adoption when the adoption is determined to be in the best interest of the child."
The American Bar Association adopted the following position statement in Aug. 1995:

"BE IT RESOLVED, that the American Bar Association supports the enactment of legislation and implementation of public policy providing that child custody and visitation shall not be denied or restricted on the basis of sexual orientation.
American Psychological Association
The American Medical Association adopted the following position statement at its June 2004 meeting:

"Whereas, Having two fully sanctioned and legally defined parents promotes a safe and nurturing environment for children, including psychological and legal security; and

"Whereas, Children born or adopted into families headed by partners who are of the same sex usually have only one biologic or adoptive legal parent; and

"Whereas, The legislative protection afforded to children of parents in homosexual relationships varies from state to state, with some states enacting or considering legislation sanctioning co-parent or second parent adoption by partners of the same sex, several states declining to consider legislation, and at least one state altogether banning adoption by the second parent; and

"Whereas, Co-parent or second parent adoption guarantees that the second parent's custody rights and responsibilities are protected if the first parent dies or becomes incapacitated; and

"Whereas, Co-parent or second parent adoption ensures the child's eligibility for health benefits from both parents and establishes the requirement for child support from both parents in the event of the parents' separation; and

"Whereas, Co-parent or second parent adoption establishes legal grounds to provide consent for medical care and to make health care decisions on behalf of the child and guarantees visitation rights if the child becomes hospitalized; and

"Whereas, The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association have each issued statements supporting initiatives which allow same-sex couples to adopt and co-parent children; therefore be it

"RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association support legislative and other efforts to allow the adoption of a child by the same-sex partner, or opposite sex non-married partner, who functions as a second parent or co-parent to that child. (New HOD Policy)"
Child Welfare League of America
The American Psychiatric Association adopted the following position statement at its November 2002 meeting:

The American Psychiatric Association supports initiatives that allow same-sex couples to adopt and co-parent children and supports all the associated legal rights, benefits, and responsibilities which arise from such initiatives.

The American Psychiatric Association adopted the following position statement at its December 1997 meeting:

1. Sexual orientation should not be used as the sole or primary factor in child custody decisions.

2. Gay and lesbian couples and individuals should be allowed to become parents through adoption, fostering and new reproductive technologies, subject to the same type of screening used with heterosexual couples and individuals.

3. Second-parent adoptions which grant full parental rights to a second, unrelated adult (usually an unmarried partner of a legal parent), are often in the best interest of the child(ren) and should not be prohibited solely because both adults are of the same gender.

4. Custody determinations after dissolution of a gay relationship should be done in a manner similar to other custody determinations.
National Adoption Center
The American Psychoanalytic Association adopted this policy statement in support of gay and lesbian parenting in May 2002:

"The American Psychoanalytic Association supports the position that the salient consideration in decisions about parenting, including conception, child rearing, adoption, visitation and custody is the best interest of the child. Accumulated evidence suggests the best interest of the child requires attachment to committed, nurturing and competent parents. Evaluation of an individual or couple for these parental qualities should be determined without prejudice regarding sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian individuals and couples are capable of meeting the best interest of the child and should be afforded the same rights and should accept the same responsibilities as heterosexual parents. With the adoption of this position statement, we support research studies that further our understanding of the impact of both traditional and gay/lesbian parenting on a child's development."

The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives adopted this position statement July 28, 2004:

"WHEREAS APA supports policy and legislation that promote safe, secure and nurturing environments for all children (DeLeon, 1993, 1995; Fox, 1991; Levant, 2000);

"WHEREAS APA has a long-established policy to deplore 'all public and private discrimination against gay men and lesbians' and urges 'the repeal of all discriminatory legislation against lesbians and gay men' (Conger, 1975);
"WHEREAS the APA adopted the Resolution on Child Custody and Placement in 1976 (Conger, 1977, p. 432);

"WHEREAS Discrimination against lesbian and gay parents deprives their children of benefits, rights and privileges enjoyed by children of heterosexual married couples;

"WHEREAS Some jurisdictions prohibit gay and lesbian individuals and same-sex couples from adopting children, notwithstanding the great need for adoptive parents (Lofton v. Secretary, 2004);

"WHEREAS There is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children (Patterson, 2000, 2004; Perrin, 2002; Tasker, 1999);

"WHEREAS Research has shown that the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish (Patterson, 2004; Perrin, 2002; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001);

"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED That the APA opposes any discrimination based on sexual orientation in matters of adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services;"

"THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED That the APA believes that children reared by a same-sex couple benefit from legal ties to each parent;

"THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED That the APA supports the protection of parent-child relationships through the legalization of joint adoptions and second parent adoptions of children being reared by same-sex couples;

"THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED That APA shall take a leadership role in opposing all discrimination based on sexual orientation in matters of adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services;

"THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED That APA encourages psychologists to act to eliminate all discrimination based on sexual orientation in matters of adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care, and reproductive health services in their practice, research, education and training (Ethical Principles, 2002, p. 1063);

"THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED That the APA shall provide scientific and educational resources that inform public discussion and public policy development regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation in matters of adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services and that assist its members, divisions and affiliated state, provincial, and territorial psychological associations."

The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives adopted the following position statement in September 1976:

"The sex, gender identity or sexual orientation of natural or prospective adoptive or foster parents should not be the sole or primary variable considered in custody or placement cases."
Reference: Conger, J.J. (1977). Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, Incorporated, for the year 1976: Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Council of Representatives. American Psychologist, 32, 408-438.
National Association of Social Workers
The Child Welfare League of America's Standards of Excellence for Adoption Services states:

"Applicants should be assessed on the basis of their abilities to successfully parent a child needing family membership and not on their race, ethnicity or culture, income, age, marital status, religion, appearance, differing lifestyles, or sexual orientation." Further, applicants for adoption should be accepted "on the basis of an individual assessment of their capacity to understand and meet the needs of a particular available child at the point of adoption and in the future."
North American Council on Adoptable Children
The Board of Directors of the National Adoption Center approved the following adoptive parent assessment policy statement on September 17, 1998

"We believe that every child has the right to a loving, nurturing and permanent family, and that people from a variety of life experiences offer strengths for these children."
Voice for Adoption
"Therefore, it is the policy of the National Adoption Center that no person should be denied consideration in the adoption process solely based on marital status, sexual orientation, lifestyle, disability, physical appearance, race, gender, age, religion and/or size of family."

The National Association of Social Workers approved the following policy statement at in August 2002 at the NASW Delegate Assembly.

"Legislation legitimizing second-parent adoptions in same-sex households should be supported. Legislation seeking to restrict foster care and adoption by gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people should be vigorously opposed."

Social Work Speaks: National Association of Social Workers Policy Statements, 2003-2006.

The North American Council on Adoptable Children issued a policy statement in 1998 (amended April 14, 2002) that states:

"Children should not be denied a permanent family because of the sexual orientation of potential parents. Everyone with the potential to successfully parent a child in foster care or adoption is entitled to fair and equal consideration."

The board of directors of Voice for Adoption passed the following position statement on discrimination in Sept. 2006.

"Voice for Adoption believes that children deserve every opportunity to have a permanent, loving family, and that ruling out prospective parents through discrimination limits children's options for permanency."

"We oppose policies and practices that discriminate against prospective parents, including but not limited to discrimination based on age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, marital status, family size, disability, medical condition, geographic location, employment status, occupation (including employment in the child welfare system), and educational attainment."

"We support making decisions about approving prospective parents and matching waiting children on a case-by-case basis, based on the strengths of the family and the best interests of each child."

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Professional Organizations on LGBTQ Parenting | Human Rights Campaign

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The prevailing professional opinion is that a parent's sexual orientation has nothing to do with his or her ability to be a good parent. The nation's leading child welfare, psychological and children's health organizations also have issued policy or position statements declaring that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child.

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abortion can cause health issues later in life.

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DenKuvaiev/iStock

If you are a parent of a child with special needs, you undoubtedly have bigger challenges to overcome than you ever thought possible. There may be days where you feel all alone in your struggle. Maybe you've been so busy taking care of your child's needs, in addition to the rest of your family, that you have not had the opportunity to seek encouragement from those who have trekked a similar road. Whether you're raising a child with various physical, developmental or emotional challenges, we hope you'll find comfort in this collection of stories from parents who are living the joys and trials of raising special-needs children.

Amid these stories from other parents, you'll find tips and tools in the areas of schooling, church, balancing the needs of your disabled child and the needs of your other children, coping when your circumstances have become too hard and encouragement in developing friendships.

Likely your days are filled with appointments, therapies and other responsibilities necessary for the care of your children. Perhaps you're also working through circumstances that seek to overwhelm you. If you'd find it beneficial to speak with one of our licensed counselors, don't hesitate to call us at 1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459).

And sometimes, all you need is to bounce ideas off of another parent - maybe one who's been down a similar path. Connecting with others who can relate to your journey can offer long-lasting friendship and fellowship.

Note: The articles in this series are not meant to replace the advice of medical professionals or licensed counselors.

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Amid these stories from other parents, you'll find tips and tools in the areas of schooling, church, balancing the needs of your disabled child and the needs of your other children, coping when your circumstances have become too hard and encouragement in developing friendships.

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I believe we should legalize 🤬.It not bad for your health it actually good for your health.Nine states -- Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, California, Vermont -- and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational .I believe those nne states made the best choice.

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 Dozens of people died of 🤬 overdoses on the day recreational use became legal in Colorado or Oregon.

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 Dozens of people died of 🤬 overdoses on the day recreational use became legal in Colorado or Oregon.

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especially if a woman attempts to become pregnant again. Such a complication includes ectopic pregnancy.

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most of the time people that smoke this overdose to the point where they die immediately.

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Treatments for 🤬 dependence are similar to therapies for other drug-abuse problems. These include detoxification, behavioral therapies, and regular attendance at support-group meetings like those sponsored by Narcotics Anonymous.

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Treatments for 🤬 dependence are similar to therapies for other drug-abuse problems. These include detoxification, behavioral therapies, and regular attendance at support-group meetings like those sponsored by Narcotics Anonymous.

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Gun Control should be regulated and check. As in the amendment, it says that we have rights to bare arms, but there should be rights and wrongs. For controlling the shootings, and laws being broken, we could have a very strict mental testing and a long background check. We also should ban the illgeal guns, like for instants, the AK 47's and military guns from people that would have chance of killing someone else. If by any chance you want to buy a gun like this, then you will need more than one mental testing and very very very long background check. NRA, is such a big organization, that guns are everywhere, even on the blackmarket, so we cant just take away the amendment, we need to regulate the laws, and keep our people safe.
-KLP

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abortion can cause health issues later in life. Humans should not be allowed to give there child up for abortion cause it not fair for for the child or the human

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🤬 smoke contains some of the same compounds that cause cancer like tobacco,sometimes in higher concentrations.

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Gun control should =

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Abortions are not right in any way shape or form. Taking a life that belongs to someone else should not be your decision. Children are humans too.

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Where can a woman get help with an untimely pregnancy?

Pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) nationwide provide free services, including confidential counseling, help dealing with family problems, medical care, housing assistance, and job placement assistance.

They also provide free maternity and baby clothes, diapers, and baby furniture. Two national organizations can help women find local PRCs:

National Life Center Help Line
Phone: 800-848-LOVE
Website: NationalLifeCenter.com

Pregnancy resource centers are always in need of donations of money, baby items and volunteer time, providing an ideal opportunity for those who care about needy mothers and their children to take action on their behalf.

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Where can a woman get help with an untimely pregnancy? - Pro-Life Action League

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Pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) nationwide provide free services, including confidential counseling, help dealing with family problems, medical care, housing assistance, and job placement assistance. They also provide free maternity and baby clothes, diapers, and baby furniture.

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Gun control is our 2nd amendment. The NRA is doing what they cna to stop the violence. I know because I am a part of the NRA. I don"t agree with the with what people are doing and saying to the NRA. I f you don't know what the NRA is it is the National Rifle Association. Our second amendment says that "we the people have the right to bear arms." this is half of my feelings on gun control. It isn't the dealer that pulled the trigger. Before you pull that trigger ask what if it was your kid.

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Animal Testing has pros and cons but most people like to focus on the cons such as harming the animals but there are also pros such as that it makes it to where the products we use are safe

-CMP

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An animal test is any scientific experiment or test in which a live animal is forced to undergo something that is likely to cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.

Animal experiments are not the same as taking your companion animal to the vet. Animals used in laboratories are deliberately harmed, not for their own good, and are usually killed at the end of the experiment.

Animal experiments

Animal experiments include:

injecting or force feeding animals with potentially harmful substances

exposing animals to radiation

surgically removing animals' organs or tissues to deliberately cause damage

forcing animals to inhale toxic gases

subjecting animals to frightening situations to create anxiety and depression.

Animals used

Only vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, fish and amphibians) and some invertebrates such as octopuses are defined as 'animals' by European legislation governing animal experiments. Shockingly, in the USA rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals under animal experiments regulations. That means no legal permission to experiment on them is needed and they are not included in any statistics.

Animals used in experiments are usually bred for this purpose by the laboratory or in breeding facilities. It's a cruel, multi-million dollar industry. Cruelty Free International believes that all animals are equally important. A dog bred for research is still a dog who could otherwise live a happy life in a loving home.

Some monkeys are still trapped in the wild in Africa, Asia and South America to be used in experiments or imprisoned in breeding facilities. Their children are exported to laboratories around the world. The use of wild-caught monkeys in experiments is generally banned in Europe but is allowed elsewhere.

Horses and other animals such as cows, sheep and pigs are often supplied by dealers and may originate from racing stables or farms for use in animal experiments. The rules preventing the use of stray companion animals like dogs and cats vary from country to country.

Animal suffering

A large proportion of animal experiments in the EU are reported to cause 'moderate' or 'severe suffering' to the animals - according to the researchers who carry them out. In the UK in 2016, 35% of animal experiments involved moderate or severe suffering.

Some experiments require the animal to die as part of the test. For example, regulatory tests for botox, vaccines and some tests for chemical safety are essentially variations of the cruel Lethal Dose 50 test in which 50% of the animals die or are killed very close to death.

The strength of botox is measured in mouse LD50 units. This cruel test involves injecting hundreds of mice directly into their abdomens and counting the number who die from poisoning over the next three days. Tens of thousands of mice suffer in this way in the UK and Ireland every year.

Laboratories

Laboratories are no place for any animal. They are typically sterile, indoor environments in which the animals are forced to live in cages - denied complete freedom of movement and control over their lives. Some animals in laboratories are confined on their own, without the companionship of others.

The science relating to animal experiments can be extremely complicated and views often differ. What appears on this website represents Cruelty Free International expert opinion, based on a thorough assessment of the evidence.

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An animal test is any scientific experiment or test in which a live animal is forced to undergo something that is likely to cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm. Animal experiments are not the same as taking your companion animal to the vet.

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Minimum wage increase is a good thing. The reason is it helps our economy is it helps boost money where those who can't afford things can begin to afford things. If cost were to go up to high then the economy would suffer. There would be a dollar collapse. There also should be a evening in the prices of gender

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Healthcare should be legalized for american citizens because of the fact that it states in the declaration of independence That people of america are entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I'm pretty sure that that would include free health.

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Proponents say it would stop medical bankruptcies and improve public health. Opponents say it is socialism and should be an individual’s responsibility.

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Recreational 🤬 should be legal in America, simply and truly. 🤬 is one of the less harmful 🤬 in existence, considering it is a plant. In America we have exceptionally high prison rates, and a considerable amount of those behind bars  are from doing something that shouldn't even be illegal. Also, if recreational 🤬 became legal, crime rates would drop. If you make something legal, there is less chance somebody will get hurt trying to get it. This will save many from getting contaminated 🤬 and addiction to more harmful 🤬.

-CM