TrickstaPriest

44 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

This “oathbreaker” fellow is an excellent example of why I have been saying in this thread politically motivated violence is not acceptable. Whatever your ostensible motivations, when you riot, assault or murder in the name of your beliefs those who disagree with you society must bring the full force of the law to bear. Someone can always justify their actions by saying “What choice did I have?”

 

 You had lots of other options. He is self admittedly guilty of violent insurrection and public mayhem. 68 months is a very reasonable amount of time, more would have been arguable as well.

While I never say never, I agree that there's rarely a good outcome to allowing for this sort of thing.  And an environment where its acceptable is always worse than an environment where it is not.

the whole James O Brian "hate the conman not the conned".  At some point though someone (in this case the ex-marine) has to be responsible for the harm they caused, and most importantly others need to realize that person will continue to harm people if not dealt with.  So punishment / imprisonment is our only capable action here.

Been pretty interesting to think of this culture war in the superhero context, and the g****mn nightmare that would look like.

Yeah.  I'll believe it when it happens... and only for as long as it happens.

12 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Pence has classified docs now also?

 

Maybe I should go through my attic and garage just to be sure I'm in the clear....

Doesn't really surprise me from what I heard about Rumsfeld... though it would be helpful to know the relative importance of some of these docs as compared to different people.  One doc can be serious, or nothing at all.

11 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

It's currently far less time and effort to simply buy a gun. 3d printing a firearm isn't quite so convenient as the press leads people to believe. I'm not a huge fan of Vice on these sorts of things, but this video was pretty well put together and gives some good insight to the whole process:

Yeah, I sort of figured this on inference - we haven't seen it being used yet, so its not there.  The rifle scenario was one I thought would be more concerning, but I didn't know its use-profile was more suited to sniper activity.  Or maybe hunting.  Which I do treat somewhat differently.  Straight capability was an argument against VCRs and copyright... (additional word edit:) but their utility wasn't just for stealing TV shows.  (though that's not literal life or death)

It kicks the can down the road, but my sentiment hadn't changed - a lot of societies simply tasted too much blood, or were worried about the amount of blood to be spilled (or other reasons).

Of course, besides the historical/cultural want to maintain access to weaponry like this, we have the current situation of having a political party toy with members who like to talk about violent revolution (presumably against the left), so there's other reasons to consider whether a leftist push to remove guns locally is unwise... or maybe actually wiser than it seems.

In the long run though, capability and explicit utility doesn't favor access to weapons like these.  The drone argument is a great contrast because it doesn't have that cultural bias.  The cost for drone harm isn't high nor demonstrated yet, but we are willing to recognize it before it even happens.

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The priority of a peace officer isn't supposed to be keeping yourself safe, it's to keep innocent civilians safe. If that means putting yourself between civilians and danger, that's the job. We don't expect soldiers to avoid the front lines, or firefighters to never enter a burning building to rescue people.

 

If you're unwilling to do the job, find another job.

I mean, it's easy to say that, another to do...

but I do believe it was cowardice (and incredibly poor leadership) that created that event.

2 hours ago, Tom said:

You may be over-estimating how easy it is to get the equipment.

 

You can order a drone online and have it shipped to your door.  I'm not sure how hard it would be to find the recipes for simple explosives, but it's clearly not impossible.

Yeah, I may be over-estimating that.  Though the ratio of 'serious self injury' to 'other results' in attempting that kind of recipe is... higher than many tasks, at least.

I burned my spices and chili twice, separately, in the same batch of cooking I was doing Friday

It's a lot of work to control a drone, and they can't carry much weight.  You'd need to be networking a fleet of them, with individual payloads, to have enough explosives to kill people on the scale of 10 dead and 10 injured (or get a very good opportunity target, like a plane).  Any of which requires a lot of time and forethought and thinking... currently.

People aren't lazy... but studying, planning, thinking, a lot of it is the sort of thing we don't do very easily.  It's a lot harder when we are angry or depressed... it takes a level of dedication that takes it out of the range (at least to me) of a lot of shooters.

So comparatively, it's much easier to buy a gun (and spend almost zero time learning how to use it properly).  My area has almost no checks, and it's only a few hours drive to many other states.  So comparatively... it's mostly a question of definitions of 'what is a gun' and 'when is it a weapon'.  It's no longer a conversation about 'whether guns are a serious problem to society' and (fix edit:)more an argument over legal definitions.  If we are going to argue the point of 'when is a gun a dangerous weapon', we've already gone past 'can a gun be dangerous enough to society to legislate against'.  But we have laws against  CP even though p**n isn't easy to define as well.  There is a way to legislate, and many other countries have had that will and had the benefits of it.

Other circumstances and beliefs aside.

So I just don't find the argument over at what point is a gun a dangerous weapon very 'fruitful'.  It strikes me as a stalling tactic than a real honest question about the issue - it does wholly nothing in discussing whether something actually needs to be done or not.

It -was- worth having the conversation so far though - my opinion has changed on how long it'll take (at least) for direct firearms to scale up higher.  It still will take a while yet, though as mentioned... 3d printed guns are also a factor here.  And that's going to complicate things in the very 'hot' atmosphere of our political society.

Assuming there isn't an American societal collapse though, the ability to have access to more lethal arms will occur over the next 10-20 years.  Ammo, printed guns, aim assist, or new models of weaponry.  It's a matter of how we want to deal with that, and how we want to enforce that.  If we aren't going to have the discussion before blood is spilled, it will be after.

12 minutes ago, Tom said:

An additional point of consideration with this rifle, is you have to look at the system as a whole.  The rifle is a nice piece of engineering, but that isn’t what’s supposed to make it such a big deal - either for the military or in civilian hands.

 

It’s using a new ammunition technology which supposedly results in a round which is capable of defeating Class-IV body armor at ranges in the 500+ yards category and it’s getting a super-snifty sci-fi scope (XM157 from Vortex) which is supposed to make the average soldier competent out to those distances.

Yeh, though also my 'speaking in code' was because I didn't think I should be married to that particular rifle in terms of my general concern.

I have seen a number of improved capabilities in terms of causing harm.  Snipers aren't as much of a concern mostly because of the ever-present nature of 'cameras in public' - the irony being that if our surveillance state decreases, so to will the ability to get away with being a random sniper increases 😕  Mass shootings are easy and cause a lot of harm before help can arrive (be it by intervention or investigation).  The convenience of it is why its such a horrid lure... maybe I'm over-worried, but we are seeing a lot of death lately.  I don't think it's wrong to say society is getting fed up with it, technical reasons on whether it's justified (or intentional, or just a political tool) aside.

With drones is the temptation in using something that may seem to make it hard to be caught - until its demonstrated believably that we can find and catch someone using them, people will use them.  Thankfully(?) our ability to track down people based on limited information in general is well-demonstrated... so we may not need the example case(s).

The two differences are why I still think mass shootings will be a thing over drones; it's short-sighted, short-tempered, and easily-convenient to get the equipment.  I don't know that I can just blame 'coverage' on it - technically true that if we never talked about it, no one would care.  But I could say the same things about several unmentionable topics.  I think the line is in how much harm we are willing to accept for rights... there is a line, but a lot of societies crossed it a long time ago and closed it off.  We appear to be the abnormality here... and thus I think the coverage frankly is biased in the other direction in the long run...

--

Insofar as the rest goes...   other than that the escalating ability of weapons concerns me, I do have to consider them weapons.  There's a substantial difference in the improvement of capability of a weapon and the improvement of capability of most other tools.  It's that difference (and the intended utility in that difference) that, I think, makes the argument that such things ARE a weapon and not merely a tool.

Parsing the difference in a legally enforceable aspect though is not easy - here is where the actual argument appears to be (to me)

17 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

With advancing technology, it is possible to manufacture a firearm using a 3d printer.  From a quick google search, it would be illegal to do so in Canada, but not illegal in the US.  Like whether it's legal or not is a significant impediment to someone planning to use the firearm in an illegal manner anyway...

Yes.  Which is particularly why solutions are difficult.  But it's not really an argument against a solution, unfortunately, other than that any propositions are going to be difficult.

In short, typical enforcement methods probably won't work.  But the alternative is to look the other way when the body count potentially starts to soar.  Whether we are talking about guns, drones, or other tools.  I don't think a 'don't do a thing, hands off approach' is going to work.  It may work today, but in a decade?

Things will have the potential to get bad, and I don't think society is going to be willing to overlook daily counts in the triple digits or more.

9 minutes ago, Tom said:

I've seen that video, and his estimation on when that rifle will be readily available to the public is wildly optimistic (from a shooter's perspective) and I doubt the video was part of the issue at Uvalde - though the firearms community contains as many ignorant people as any other community.  At the time of the video the civilian version of the rifle had an MSRP of $7999 and required two NFA transfer fees (plus a possible act of god) to acquire.  The ammo isn't easy to come by either, being an entirely new caliber. 

 

My personal take on what happened at Uvalde was a massive failure of leadership, but my opinion is that of any other person getting his information from the news.

 

You might also want to clarify what you mean by "cheap guns".  Your typical AR-platform rifle runs $500-$2000 new depending on the manufacturer, etc, and the manufacturer producing the Army's new rifle is not known for being budget friendly.

Very true, and you may have a better idea of why Uvalde fell apart (I do know leadership was a significant issue, I just wonder at the timing.  I may overemphasize the timing though!)

'Cheap' is good to say in context too.  $500-2k isn't cheap for most people.  But unfortunately still viable for someone looking for an easy way to hurt people

So I think the big piece of context is that he might be 'wildly optimistic', which is quite believable.  I've seen the technology for guns/sighting improve significantly (aim assist firing, or FLIR equipment, for example), but we haven't seen how it would become an issue yet.  So it may very well be that personal drones and automation outstrip AR-platforms in public lethality potential first.

Hooray? 😕

10 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Weren't bows and arrows also designed as weapons?  A hunter, a farmer needing to deal with wolves and other predators and a skeet shooter may not agree with your view, although the hunter and farmer both have "physical weapon" uses for their firearms.

Yeah, though those weapons, and modern day ones used for dealing with wolves, are a lot more limited than what we see in a number of shooting incidents.

As has been outlined by certain youtube personalities, the type of cheap guns available to the public is going to change over time, potentially very soon (the personality stressed this is due to the army changing its standard-given firearms).  My personal thought is this video went out right before Uvalde.  My (unsubstantiated) belief is that the video of that personality might have been shared around by local forces, and created the substantive hesitation as seen by the police.  That isn't necessarily the case.  However, if and when weapons more potent than the current commonly used ones become more commonplace, we will see more situations like Uvalde.

Which is to say, delay in police responses on the level of hours.

Speaking out of my butt, but my wild guess?  Probably three or four times as many children died specifically because of that Uvalde delay.  So, when shootings start increasing from 10 dead and 10 wounded to 40 dead and 40 wounded... how much will our risk appetite will need to be filled before we find ourselves handling too much?

So at some point we are going to have to decide at what point is the current conversations I see about gun rights are going to have to be retired.  We need to have a serious conversation about what capabilities are too much, personal culture of personal people aside.  If we don't take this conversation up, the (personalities/propagandists) will decide that for us.  They may do that anyway.  And they will be naked in their self-benefit.  As an example, the literal thousands of dead in New York were apparently not enough to consider COVID 'a legitimate illness' for some people.  I'm certain that shooting incidents can kill a hundred people a day, every day, and our population will lack the political will to have a serious conversation about actual, working solutions because of our dependency on these personalities (including the above).

Right now, we are not seeing that level of death.  But I'm certain drone ownership will be capable of that too, eventually, and it's a far less direct weapon than a firearm.  So should we treat firearms as a special case because of a historical and local culture?

I say no.  But I am willing to be quite lenient in terms of solutions as long as they work and minimize harm.  Someone is going to have to give up something, and I'd rather this onus not be 'the people giving up their literal lives en masse need to give more' for the rights of certain subcultures of gun owners.

The metal detectors were new (because of the 6th), but it does seem like a foolish thing... removing safety measures after candidates had a run of such advertisements as https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/us/politics/eric-greitens-rino-ad.html

7 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Of *course* they want to gut the ethics office. <eyeroll>

 

We are talking about a political party that's supported members who openly court political violence.  This is like... kicking puppies by comparison :/ 

28 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

Angry Librarian Tells Off Right-Wing Pro-Censors

I guess I can add 'librarians' to the list of 'enemies of the GOP' 😕

I can only hope.

Now I'm curious - has anyone had a chance to compare the tax returns to the ones that were leaked a few years prior?  Because there were some assertions in those ones that I'd be interested in hearing if they were legit or not...

2 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

I know there has been a contingent on the Far Left that believes the CIA and the oil companies conspire to cause every evil thing in the world, but I could not venture a guess how large a contingent it is. I prefer not to guess; I want data.

 

I would agree that the exaggerated view of American influence is subtly narcissistic, in that it presents the rest of the world as helpless and clueless to resist America's malignant power.

 

I presume the US tries to influence policy in other countries, whether allied, hostile, or neutral, through both regular diplomatic channels and covertly. I presume other governments do the same, from Israel lobbying Congress to Russian troll farms. And I don't see anything wrong with that, in the same way that I don't see anything wrong with the danger of infections or falling heavy objects: They are facts of existence, one should take reasonable precautions to avoid being harmed by them, but being upset by them is pointless.

 

I could wish the US government were better at such meddling, as the well known cases tend to be train-wreck failures or have been ultimately disastrous for the countries involved and, in the longer term, for the US itself. "Better" both in terms of competence and choice of goals. Of course, the most successful intervention would never be known to the public.

 

I would rarely if ever say I am "proud" of the US, but I do quite like that it is doing so much to help Ukraine against Russia, and so effectively. I am also pleased that it does not act alone in this. I approve the purpose; I approve the methods (to the extent that I know them); and I think it will benefit the US, its democratic allies, and -- in the long run -- humanity as a whole.

 

Dean Shomshak

It was a decade back or so when I used to say 'when you end up as making yourselves the secret masters of the planet (me criticizing past CIA meddling and that style of ambition) you end up being responsible for [every unknown, even random] evil foreign leaders choking on a bagel'.

3 minutes ago, Hermit said:

IMO Russia would LOVE to provide Trump haven. They'd have a field day calling him the "TRUE President of America in Exile". He'd be worth it just to keep fueling sedition among Trump's faithful here in the US of A.

 

This is quite a common pattern for fallen or fled kings in the past.  It's often been used as an excuse for war and invasion, "in support of the true king".  So to speak.

And heirs, even if we don't include Trump himself.

Heck, this is often how succession wars actually take place - the victor kills their siblings, but those that live flee to another country, effectively 'getting an army' in exchange for ruling their homeland as a puppet king.

Just now, Pattern Ghost said:

He'll flee the country, or attempt to, before taking his own life. He's a coward.

 

Yeah, agreed.

As much as I can say my bias colors my thinking, just about every negative thing I ever thought or said about Trump has come true.  Though all of it was pretty vague... mostly.

Pretty sad state of affairs, there.

An oldie but relevant

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets

13 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

And that Emily Grace Rainey person used to deal with psychology for the Army?

 

 

 

Years ago I did research at libraries in Paris. They treat their historical documents like gold, and moreover, there had been a recent bombing in the city and threats of more. I thought the bureaucratic hoops they made me jump through just to see the documents were excessive. But this takes it up a couple of notches from that.

This is why it's important to discuss the availability of mail-in voting.  The whole vital task of providing it because of these issues are like... for example... voting separately on 'lets end the strike' and 'lets provide the 7 days pto' allows the gov to utterly deny access to one vital thing while providing zero mechanisms to replace it.  If they want to do away with mail-in voting, issues like this need to be dealt with first.

Just now, Lord Liaden said:

Biden chose to come down on the side of management, and that may cost him and the Democratic Party at the polls.

Yeah, and the problem to me is the amount of 'humor' that amounts to murdering/killing the Dems (and possibly their voting base) and the implication that the Democratic Party just looks at that and 'shrugs'.

2 minutes ago, Hermit said:

I hate the term "Both sides" but I'm rather pissed at the Democratic Party (or at least Biden) right now because of their treatment of the potential rail strikers. The GQP? I expected it from.

Yep, exactly.  Since I moved to my current location, I've been exposed to more, what I can call, 'murder the libs/welfare humor' than I could have ever imagined.

So it's quite something to see the Dem Party basically shrug their shoulders as that is further legitimized and continue to risk their own irrelevancy.

I don't want teachers, or anyone else, to be put in a position where that's necessary.

I wonder at the amount of scars on the very foundations of these occupations that the GOP is willing to inflict in bids to stay politically relevant.  The only wilder thing to me is the amount the Democratic party is willing to risk toeing the possibility of losing to the GOP despite the apparent willingness to put them in the ground.  😕

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

You don't say.

 

School principals say culture wars made last year 'rough as hell'

It's bloody shocking to me how often they are just... calling out an entire workforce and naming it the enemy of the people.

Election workers too.  But USPS workers?  Doctors, nurses?  Teachers?  Children's hospitals now?  I remember reading something even toeing IT security being 'the enemy' for a bit.

2 hours ago, Tom said:

Assuming they’re working their way up the ladder, I’d assume there’s quite a few rungs to go before we see Trump facing a jury. 
 

I’d also assume they’ll need to do something concrete before the 2024 electioneering starts getting serious. 

I still get into arguments with people who think Jan 6th was 'a bunch of old men wandering around capitol hill'.  The damage people like Crowder and Tucker have done to this country cannot be underestimated.

Yeah.  Even when two people are using tactics, two tactics aren't created equal.  Making use of parties to the populace's advantage means recognizing which tactics help us and protecting them. 

But I don't give any of them a loose leash.