Connecticut (et al)

[Jason]

In spite of Hollywood propaganda, the ubiquity of firearms in the frontier period resulted in a much more peaceful society than we have today.

Do you have a time machine?

[Seth]

Seth - let's say the public actually thought your ideas were rational (well, maybe as many as 13% do, though I think the real number is half that at best) and that's exactly the course American society took: armed guards everywhere you look, nearly everyone packing a sidearm, i.e genuine ubiquity of firearms. Ignoring for now the ludicrous opinion that this would make things safer, is that really the vision of America you want to see? Do you really feel such a society would be worthy of the term Civilization?

Yup. An armed society is a polite society. It's also a safe and peaceful society. Criminality reigns when governments make helpless victims of their citizens.

Gotcha. And this is why I rarely give you a serious reply. Intellectual ideas deserve intellectual discussion. Ridiculous ideas only deserve ridicule. Yours tend to be the latter; this one certainly is.

It would be interesting to know if Seth is politer in person than he is on-line. Let's face it, Seth does tend to use FU (and derivatives) a lot here, and other things besides.

Of course I am. So are you I suspect. I've found, in my 20+ years of internet debating that it's a grave error to ascribe negative personal attributes to those with whom one debates on line. This is why I'm absolutely clear about my agenda and my persona, so no one can justifiably engage in ad hom attacks based on what's written here.

I'm a provocateur and an interlocutor, and my sole intent is to stimulate debate, something I'm pretty good at.

Is this because he does not fear the ire of a person who is safely out of reach, and who cannot do him harm?

Partly. I use a pseudonym and have isolated my on-line presence from my real life because in the past I have experienced actual physical threats from deranged debatorial opponents, so I'm very careful not to reveal my true identity these days.

Because someone who gives and takes offence so easily on-line surely cannot behave that way in real-world situations where both he and those opposed to him are likely to be armed. Such a person would long since be dead, or in prison, or executed. So if Seth is politer in real life, it would support his statement above.

It behooves everyone to understand that the Internet is not real life, and that nobody who participates here is who they really are IRL.

But ...

I prefer to be polite to people as a matter of course, because I find that life tends to flow easier for all involved that way. Not always of course, but the point is that I don't need the presence of guns to make me polite, or for others to be polite to me. And on the flip-side, there are plenty of documented cases where guns have been drawn and even people shot and killed during the heat of an argument, often over something of little consequence.

Politeness is as politeness does. So long as the debate is abstract and depersonalized, I'm happy to be polite and respectful. But when the ad hom starts and the subject becomes my character, I give better than I get and I have no compunctions about being inflammatory in response. It's only fair after all that I should also get to vent my spleen from time to time in response to, in particular, the routine use of personal attacks as a way of avoiding unpleasant truths that emerge from my arguments.

I'm no neophyte at this, I've been sparring with Netwits on the Internet since it came into existence. I like a good philosophical discussion, but I also enjoy watching people's blood-pressure rise and their reason abandon them when their arguments are destroyed and their edifice or reason crumbles around them. I find it amusing and also instructive, and it makes better debators out of those humble enough to admit their error and reconsider their arguments.

In person, however, I'm very non-confrontational precisely BECAUSE I carry a gun, and I have to be sure not to instigate anything that might require me to use it, as that's a fast way to the penitentiary. So my firearms makes me a very polite and respectful person IRL, much more so that if I did not carry. I don't get drunk, I don't carouse and make a nuisance of myself, I don't try to be the center of attention. In fact I loathe bars and drunkenness and I much prefer a polite conversation at home to a raucous party.

There's not a person (IRL) here, even including MrJonno, whom I would hesitate to have a cuppa tea or lunch with. I don't make the mistake of assuming that what I read here has much of anything to do with who that person is in real life.

[Jason]

Interesting. In 1997 it was found that 23% of guns in possession of criminals that were incarcerated were purchased through legitimate means and 34% of those were made through questionable points of sale (gun shows, pawn shops and flea markets). 24% were purchased illegally. 38% were borrowed or given (92% of the time from family or friends). 9% were stolen. 6% fell out of the sky or something.

[Blind groper]

In spite of Hollywood propaganda, the ubiquity of firearms in the frontier period resulted in a much more peaceful society than we have today.

.

Frankly, I do not believe it. You need to present proper evidence to make a statement like this and get away with it. In my country, the pioneering days saw a much higher per capita level of homicide than we have now. One of the reasons for that was that guns were widely carried back then.

Here is a comment from experts.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/w ... 1515390281

I quote :

This article demonstrates that the West was unusually homicidal compare to the rest of the Western world, except for the most violent areas of the South during Reconstruction.

Today, in New Zealand, we have close to zero hand guns, and long guns are only in the hands of those with a legitimate use for them. Our murder rate is one fifth of that of the USA.

Seth fails to take into account the temporary loss of control that many otherwise law abiding citizens have. I knew a guy who held down a responsible job, and was married. He was fine until he got drunk. When drunk, he got belligerent, and had been known to get into raging arguments, and go home and beat his wife (the marriage did not last). The thing is that people like that are not uncommon. The police could tell you of large numbers of such cases. You simply do not put guns in the hands of such people.

If you increase gun ownership, you increase gun possession by people who should not have guns. You cannot prevent that. More guns in the hands of responsible citizens means more guns in the hands of criminals, and more guns in the hands of mean drunks. Increasing gun ownership will inevitably increase gun murders. Reducing gun ownership will reduce gun murders, especially if we are talking of hand guns.

[klr]

...
It would be interesting to know if Seth is politer in person than he is on-line. Let's face it, Seth does tend to use FU (and derivatives) a lot here, and other things besides.

Of course I am. So are you I suspect. I've found, in my 20+ years of internet debating that it's a grave error to ascribe negative personal attributes to those with whom one debates on line. This is why I'm absolutely clear about my agenda and my persona, so no one can justifiably engage in ad hom attacks based on what's written here.

You suspect wrongly. I behave on-line as I would in real life, more or less. I've openly stated this on any number of occasions in the past, whenever the subject of real-world v. on-line persona comes up for discussion.

I'm a provocateur and an interlocutor, and my sole intent is to stimulate debate, something I'm pretty good at.

No, your sole intent as I see it to defend certain positions at the extreme ends of several spectrums. If you were truly interested in stimulating debate, you would vary your positions and subject matter a lot more.

As for your assessment of yourself: You only judge (or claim) on the basis of the number of people who choose to debate with you. Did it ever occur to you that there may be others (perhaps many more) who choose not to debate with you?

Is this because he does not fear the ire of a person who is safely out of reach, and who cannot do him harm?

Partly. I use a pseudonym and have isolated my on-line presence from my real life because in the past I have experienced actual physical threats from deranged debatorial opponents, so I'm very careful not to reveal my true identity these days.

Ah. So we're back to only deranged people being a threat I see ...

Because someone who gives and takes offence so easily on-line surely cannot behave that way in real-world situations where both he and those opposed to him are likely to be armed. Such a person would long since be dead, or in prison, or executed. So if Seth is politer in real life, it would support his statement above.

It behooves everyone to understand that the Internet is not real life, and that nobody who participates here is who they really are IRL.

The Internet can impact on real life as much as any other technology or medium.

But ...

I prefer to be polite to people as a matter of course, because I find that life tends to flow easier for all involved that way. Not always of course, but the point is that I don't need the presence of guns to make me polite, or for others to be polite to me. And on the flip-side, there are plenty of documented cases where guns have been drawn and even people shot and killed during the heat of an argument, often over something of little consequence.

Politeness is as politeness does. So long as the debate is abstract and depersonalized, I'm happy to be polite and respectful. But when the ad hom starts and the subject becomes my character, I give better than I get and I have no compunctions about being inflammatory in response. It's only fair after all that I should also get to vent my spleen from time to time in response to, in particular, the routine use of personal attacks as a way of avoiding unpleasant truths that emerge from my arguments.

Wouldn't you make your case better if you just focused on the facts, and ignored anything you perceived as a personal attack or otherwise inflammatory? Why should it be so important to retaliate in kind?

I'm no neophyte at this, I've been sparring with Netwits on the Internet since it came into existence. I like a good philosophical discussion, but I also enjoy watching people's blood-pressure rise and their reason abandon them when their arguments are destroyed and their edifice or reason crumbles around them. I find it amusing and also instructive, and it makes better debators out of those humble enough to admit their error and reconsider their arguments.

Why do you so often collectively disparage those whom you debate with?

The rest of the above is just hubris I'm afraid, and the lest said about it the better.

In person, however, I'm very non-confrontational precisely BECAUSE I carry a gun, and I have to be sure not to instigate anything that might require me to use it, as that's a fast way to the penitentiary. So my firearms makes me a very polite and respectful person IRL, much more so that if I did not carry. I don't get drunk, I don't carouse and make a nuisance of myself, I don't try to be the center of attention. In fact I loathe bars and drunkenness and I much prefer a polite conversation at home to a raucous party.

So ... you would be much more confrontational in real life if you did not carry a gun? That's all I wanted to hear really ...

BTW, I don't drink, and I come from a culture where it is practically demanded of people.

[Robert_S]

America has spent the past week burying schoolchildren and talking heatedly about gun laws. We all know the treacherous politics involved — but few understand the real history of gun control in this country.

We’ve largely accepted what the well-paid lobbyists of the National Rifle Association have told us. And it’s time we re-examined some of those big assumptions.

Gun advocates have been taught by the NRA that gun laws infringe on the Second Amendment. That gun rights are an inherent part of our nation’s gun culture. And that gun control is a modern-day liberal cause.

Turns out, none of that is true. Our country has regulated guns since its earliest days. The Founding Fathers, frontier towns in the Wild West, conservative hero Ronald Reagan and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns, according to Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA. Individual gun rights were tightly restricted, with NRA support, until the past few decades.

http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2 ... _part.html

[Ian]

Seth - let's say the public actually thought your ideas were rational (well, maybe as many as 13% do, though I think the real number is half that at best) and that's exactly the course American society took: armed guards everywhere you look, nearly everyone packing a sidearm, i.e genuine ubiquity of firearms. Ignoring for now the ludicrous opinion that this would make things safer, is that really the vision of America you want to see? Do you really feel such a society would be worthy of the term Civilization?

Yup. An armed society is a polite society. It's also a safe and peaceful society. Criminality reigns when governments make helpless victims of their citizens.

Gotcha. And this is why I rarely give you a serious reply. Intellectual ideas deserve intellectual discussion. Ridiculous ideas only deserve ridicule. Yours tend to be the latter; this one certainly is.

Why is it ridiculous? In spite of Hollywood propaganda, the ubiquity of firearms in the frontier period resulted in a much more peaceful society than we have today.

Okay, I'm not even going to read any more than that. If you honestly believe that was the case, then not only is your ideology from fantasyland, but your understanding of history is simply pathetic.

Yes, your ideas are ridiculous. The fact that you can pull out bullshit on top of bullshit and call them facts, and use them to justify extremist opinions that you clearly don't even doubt is what proves it. You don't deserve my disagreement, you deserve my pity.

[Seth]

Seth - let's say the public actually thought your ideas were rational (well, maybe as many as 13% do, though I think the real number is half that at best) and that's exactly the course American society took: armed guards everywhere you look, nearly everyone packing a sidearm, i.e genuine ubiquity of firearms. Ignoring for now the ludicrous opinion that this would make things safer, is that really the vision of America you want to see? Do you really feel such a society would be worthy of the term Civilization?

Yup. An armed society is a polite society. It's also a safe and peaceful society. Criminality reigns when governments make helpless victims of their citizens.

Gotcha. And this is why I rarely give you a serious reply. Intellectual ideas deserve intellectual discussion. Ridiculous ideas only deserve ridicule. Yours tend to be the latter; this one certainly is.

Why is it ridiculous? In spite of Hollywood propaganda, the ubiquity of firearms in the frontier period resulted in a much more peaceful society than we have today.

Okay, I'm not even going to read any more than that. If you honestly believe that was the case, then not only is your ideology from fantasyland, but your understanding of history is simply pathetic.

Yes, your ideas are ridiculous. The fact that you can pull out bullshit on top of bullshit and call them facts, and use them to justify extremist opinions that you clearly don't even doubt is what proves it. You don't deserve my disagreement, you deserve my pity.

Go look it up. Or don't.

[Blind groper]

Go look it up. Or don't.

I did.

It turns out that the old west had more guns and more murders than the present day. The only 'peaceful' bit was due to the fact that many town Marshals had a policy of removing guns from everyone who came to town. So when the law men were the only people with guns, the towns had few murders.

I suggest we follow those pioneering law men, and remove guns from everyone. Well, at least all the hand guns.

[Seth]

...
It would be interesting to know if Seth is politer in person than he is on-line. Let's face it, Seth does tend to use FU (and derivatives) a lot here, and other things besides.

Of course I am. So are you I suspect. I've found, in my 20+ years of internet debating that it's a grave error to ascribe negative personal attributes to those with whom one debates on line. This is why I'm absolutely clear about my agenda and my persona, so no one can justifiably engage in ad hom attacks based on what's written here.

You suspect wrongly. I behave on-line as I would in real life, more or less. I've openly stated this on any number of occasions in the past, whenever the subject of real-world v. on-line persona comes up for discussion.

I seriously doubt it. It's possible though. In all that time I've met exactly two people who were well represented by their online personas.

I'm a provocateur and an interlocutor, and my sole intent is to stimulate debate, something I'm pretty good at.

No, your sole intent as I see it to defend certain positions at the extreme ends of several spectrums. If you were truly interested in stimulating debate, you would vary your positions and subject matter a lot more.

As for your assessment of yourself: You only judge (or claim) on the basis of the number of people who choose to debate with you. Did it ever occur to you that there may be others (perhaps many more) who choose not to debate with you?

Do you think I care? There's an infinite number of Netwits out there and I hardly have time to keep up with the ones that will. Still, there are pearls among the swine from time to time, and they are worth searching for.

Is this because he does not fear the ire of a person who is safely out of reach, and who cannot do him harm?

Partly. I use a pseudonym and have isolated my on-line presence from my real life because in the past I have experienced actual physical threats from deranged debatorial opponents, so I'm very careful not to reveal my true identity these days.

Ah. So we're back to only deranged people being a threat I see ...

No, it's just that the ones who ended up with restraining orders, or in one case my gun pointed at his face, happen to be deranged.

Because someone who gives and takes offence so easily on-line surely cannot behave that way in real-world situations where both he and those opposed to him are likely to be armed. Such a person would long since be dead, or in prison, or executed. So if Seth is politer in real life, it would support his statement above.

It behooves everyone to understand that the Internet is not real life, and that nobody who participates here is who they really are IRL.

The Internet can impact on real life as much as any other technology or medium.

Indeed it can, but it's still not real life, it's cyberspace.

But ...

I prefer to be polite to people as a matter of course, because I find that life tends to flow easier for all involved that way. Not always of course, but the point is that I don't need the presence of guns to make me polite, or for others to be polite to me. And on the flip-side, there are plenty of documented cases where guns have been drawn and even people shot and killed during the heat of an argument, often over something of little consequence.

Politeness is as politeness does. So long as the debate is abstract and depersonalized, I'm happy to be polite and respectful. But when the ad hom starts and the subject becomes my character, I give better than I get and I have no compunctions about being inflammatory in response. It's only fair after all that I should also get to vent my spleen from time to time in response to, in particular, the routine use of personal attacks as a way of avoiding unpleasant truths that emerge from my arguments.

Wouldn't you make your case better if you just focused on the facts, and ignored anything you perceived as a personal attack or otherwise inflammatory? Why should it be so important to retaliate in kind?

You would think that taking the high road would be the best way to handle trolls, but what fun is that? I get a certain amount of atavistic pleasure out of twitting the Netwits and watching them squirm and squiggle as I evicerate their stupid arguments. Being all highbrow and snooty about an internet debate is boring as hell most of the time, unless one of the pearls shows up to really explore a subject. It's my version of going down to the pub and having a rollicking good brawl on a Saturday night.

I'm no neophyte at this, I've been sparring with Netwits on the Internet since it came into existence. I like a good philosophical discussion, but I also enjoy watching people's blood-pressure rise and their reason abandon them when their arguments are destroyed and their edifice or reason crumbles around them. I find it amusing and also instructive, and it makes better debators out of those humble enough to admit their error and reconsider their arguments.

Why do you so often collectively disparage those whom you debate with?

Because most of them deserve it. Those that don't get respect as they give respect. For example, you don't see me disparaging Gallstones, do you? There's a reason for that and it begins with not taking the conversation down the ad hom highway just because you don't have a rational rebuttal or you have to think about something outside your comfortable existence. That's a classic symptom of being a Netwit. Lots of those around here.

The rest of the above is just hubris I'm afraid, and the lest said about it the better.

It's not hubris, I really am better, smarter, faster and better looking than all you wankers.

In person, however, I'm very non-confrontational precisely BECAUSE I carry a gun, and I have to be sure not to instigate anything that might require me to use it, as that's a fast way to the penitentiary. So my firearms makes me a very polite and respectful person IRL, much more so that if I did not carry. I don't get drunk, I don't carouse and make a nuisance of myself, I don't try to be the center of attention. In fact I loathe bars and drunkenness and I much prefer a polite conversation at home to a raucous party.

So ... you would be much more confrontational in real life if you did not carry a gun? That's all I wanted to hear really ...

That's not what I said. What I said was that because I carry a gun, I'm much more polite and careful not to get drawn into confrontations than your average person is. Carrying a gun is a weighty responsibility so I exercise unusual care to avoid confrontations.

BTW, I don't drink, and I come from a culture where it is practically demanded of people.

Glad to hear it. Just about every really, really bad thing that's ever happened in my life can be traced more or less directly to someone who has a problem with alcohol, from getting run over by a drunk driver to my father turning into an evil, hateful, dangerous person due to drink.

[Seth]

Go look it up. Or don't.

I did.

It turns out that the old west had more guns and more murders than the present day. The only 'peaceful' bit was due to the fact that many town Marshals had a policy of removing guns from everyone who came to town. So when the law men were the only people with guns, the towns had few murders.

I suggest we follow those pioneering law men, and remove guns from everyone. Well, at least all the hand guns.

Sources?

There were only a few towns in the west where such tactics were tried, and they didn't last much past the formative stages of the towns. Places like Deadwood, S.D. and Tombstone, AZ were pretty rowdy when the cowboys came through town, but the number of actual murders was quite low (as you indicated) and by the time any of them became more than cowtown saloon districts, those policies were long gone and the good citizens of the communities had ejected the troublemakers from their communities and things were actually quite peaceful most of the time, unlike say, Detroit today, where they've had an average of a murder a day in a place where public carrying of firearms is completely prohibited... but is so widespread that the police won't even go into certain parts of the city.

Time to call out the Militia in Detroit and clean out the viper's nest once and for all. Oh, wait, they can't because nobody has any guns because it's illegal...oh wait, except for all those bad guys with guns who don't give a damn about the law.

If the good citizens of Detroit armed themselves and organized themselves (for cripe's sake even the Black Panthers figured this out) and stood watch and the next time some car full of gangbangers tries to pull off a drive-by shooting the sentinels filled their car and the scum inside with a couple of hundred rounds of .308 API, drive-by's would quickly cease.

But they can't because they have no arms and the police won't protect them, and they won't because they've been so propagandized and cowed by those who want them to be dependent class victims that they don't know how to defend themselves and couldn't if they wanted to.

That's sick.

Pull that shit in my neighborhood and you'll be lucky to reach the end of the block alive.

[Blind groper]

What you are saying, Seth, about Detroit, is that problems exist because no one has the political will to take care of them.

That is exactly what I am saying about the gun problem. In the USA, there is a massive gun problem and a murder rate 4 times that of other western nations because no one has the political will to remove the guns that cause the problems. That is : the hand guns.

Putting more hand guns into the possession of law abiding citizens cannot be done without, at the same time, putting more of them into the possession of criminals, nut cases, and drunks.

There are clear cut things that can be done right now. Like removing the right of private citizens to sell weapons of murder to just anyone who turns up with a handful of cash. Everyone who buys a gun should have a full and thorough background check, regardless of what gun they buy and who from. Any private citizen who sells a gun to someone with no check should be subject to prosecution, and a likely jail sentence.

[Ian]

Double post

[Ian]

Try reading The Better Angels of our Nature sometime Seth, if you can comprehend social science. The old west was a far, far more violent period than our time.

If your education is so backward as to believe otherwise, then we simply cannot have a conversation about subjects like this. Would you have a conversation about astronomy with a person who is convinced that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and then snidely says to go look it up? If you can put yourself in that place, then you see the problem I have with you.

[Seth]

What you are saying, Seth, about Detroit, is that problems exist because no one has the political will to take care of them.

Nobody should have to take care of them, they should just shut the hell up and let them take care of themselves rather than what they have been doing for decades, which is deliberately and maliciously turning them into a dependent-class voting bloc beholden to the Marxist Progressives for their livelihoods and survival.

That is exactly what I am saying about the gun problem. In the USA, there is a massive gun problem and a murder rate 4 times that of other western nations because no one has the political will to remove the guns that cause the problems. That is : the hand guns.

That's not the problem. The problem is the deliberate victimization of minorities in the large urban areas to turn them into a dependency culture that must obey the government or starve, and that's facilitated by the BANNING of guns in their hands. Just look at how much furor there was when the Black Panthers of Oakland armed themselves in the 60s and took to patrolling the streets because the police wouldn't do it and would in fact further victimize the blacks of Oakland. It was the Black Panthers who turned the tide of police abuse in Oakland, for all some of them also engaged in criminal activity and racist attacks.

Putting more hand guns into the possession of law abiding citizens cannot be done without, at the same time, putting more of them into the possession of criminals, nut cases, and drunks.

The trick is to make sure that there are more law-abiding citizens with guns than there are criminals, nut cases or drunks in any particular place at any particular time. If JUST ONE person in the movie theater in Aurora had a gun, or several of them had, and had engaged the shooter immediately, no telling how many lives would have been saved. But that's just beyond your understanding, isn't it?

There are clear cut things that can be done right now. Like removing the right of private citizens to sell weapons of murder to just anyone who turns up with a handful of cash. Everyone who buys a gun should have a full and thorough background check, regardless of what gun they buy and who from. Any private citizen who sells a gun to someone with no check should be subject to prosecution, and a likely jail sentence.

That's one likely scenario, but all that will do is drive the "off-paper" trade in firearms underground, it won't stop it or even slow it down. At least half of my firearms are "off paper," which means they were deliberately and intentionally purchased for cash at gun shows where there are no background checks just so that there is no federal paperwork that can be used to trace them to me.

I have little intrinsic objection to the NICS system, and I think it's a good idea in concept, but not in execution. One of the things Congress explicitly told the BATFE that they could NOT do with NICS background checks was to keep the query data for more than 24 hours after it was completed. This was expressly made part of the law to PREVENT the BATFE from creating a firearms owner database (gun registration), but instead of doing what it was told, the BATFE kept those records in direct violation of the law.

I'll be happy to run a background check on every gun I sell or buy if, and only if the system is set up so that the SELLER can make a phone call directly to NICS and give the name and DOB of the BUYER to the terminal operator WITHOUT revealing either his identity or the make, model or serial number of the firearm (although I'd make a serial number check optional to make sure the gun isn't stolen) and get back a "go/no go" response within 30 seconds from NICS.

Having been a certified NCIC/CCIC terminal operator I happen to know that a NICS "background check" takes typically less than ten seconds to complete. You type in the name and DOB of the suspect and the NCIC computers spit back either "no record found" or a rap sheet right away, barring some sort of computer problems.

And that's ALL a NICS check is, a query to the NCIC database, and in some cases, like in Colorado, a query of the CCIC state database at the same time, which is done automatically by the system.

What takes all the time is passing all the buyer and seller information and the gun's serial number so that the transaction can be (illegally) recorded in the (illegal) federal database of all gun transactions so that it can eventually be used (illegally) to facilitate gun confiscations and "traces."

I'd like nothing more than to be able to call in and find out if the person I'm considering selling a gun is a criminal, but not enough to put any of my off-paper guns back on paper by using the existing system, which ONLY allows licensed dealers to run NICS checks in conjunction with a Form 4473 filled out by the buyer, which creates a defacto registration of the firearm.

But until the process is available to citizens, at will, by phone, and anonymously as to the seller's identity and the identification of the firearm (which is utterly irrelevant to whether or not the buyer is legally qualified to buy a firearm), I'll continue to buy and sell guns off the federal radar, no matter what laws they pass.

So if one of my guns gets sold to a criminal, it's YOUR fault, and the fault of all gun-banners who have consistently tried to use the "Instant Check" system as a defacto and illegal gun registration scheme rather than providing a system that will help insure that private transactions don't end up getting a gun to a felon. I will not ever register my guns. Period.