Iuz the Evil

Whenever violence is used as an attempted tool of political change, the State should be prepared to meet it with all necessary force to ensure the rule of law. The exceptions to this, where no recourse is available through legal and political mechanisms, are not the case in this nation. Trump can have his day in court. His followers can seek redress for their concerns at the ballot box. Whether they are likely to be successful in that effort is beside the point, they have lawful options. The January 6th insurrection was unacceptably meek in terms of governmental response (intentionally so, given apparent refusals to deploy the National Guard and other information that has since come to light).
 
I have no sympathy for rioters, of any ilk. The followers of Donald Trump who espouse this are particularly odious because of other elements of their dogma, and in any case should be greeted with the full legal force of the government in the event they respond in an illegitimate manner.
 
There are, in fact, many resources to manage such an incident. It just depends on the will to take action, and willingness to live with the consequences of that decision. Hopefully, elected leadership is up to the task they signed up for. 

Whenever violence is used as an attempted tool of political change, the State should be prepared to meet it with all necessary force to ensure the rule of law. The exceptions to this, where no recourse is available through legal and political mechanisms, are not the case in this nation. Trump can have his day in court. His followers can seek redress for their concerns at the ballot box. Whether they are likely to be successful in that effort is beside the point, they have lawful options. The January 6th insurrection was unacceptably meek in terms of governmental response (intentionally so, given apparent refusals to deploy the National Guard and other information that has since come to light).
 
I have no sympathy for rioters, of any ilk. The followers of Donald Trump who espouse this are particularly odious because of other elements of their dogma, and in any case should be greeted with the full legal force of the government in the event they respond in an illegitimate manner.
 
There are, in fact, many resources to manage such an incident. It just depends on the will to take action, and willingness to live with the consequences of that decision. Hopefully, elected leadership is up to the task they signed up for. 

Whenever violence is used as an attempted tool of political change, the State should be prepared to meet it with all necessary force to ensure the rule of law. The exceptions to this, where no recourse is available through legal and political mechanisms, are not the case in this nation. Trump can have his day in court. His followers can seek redress for their concerns at the ballot box. Whether they are likely to be successful in that effort is beside the point, they have lawful options. The January 6th insurrection was unacceptably meek in terms of governmental response (intentionally so, given apparent refusals to deploy the National Guard and other information that has since come to light).
 
I have no sympathy for rioters, of any ilk. The followers of Donald Trump who espouse this are particularly odious because of other elements of their dogma, and in any case should be greeted with the full legal force of the government in the event they respond in an illegitimate manner.
 
There are, in fact, many resources to manage such an incident. It just depends on the will to take action, and willingness to live with the consequences of that decision. Hopefully, elected leadership is up to the task they signed up for. 

TrickstaPriest, just in case that wasn't sarcastic: I meant "State" as in the concept of a sovereign government, not "state" as in a level of American government.

If Trump's cultists want to cause violence, the State has to be prepared to meet it. The State loses all credibility if it can be so easily intimidated.

Well, now this isn’t something I honestly expected on my BINGO card…
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64992727
 
BBC News: ICC issues arrest warrant for Russian president

That's because the Poles, along with the other NATO states that directly border Russia, harbor no illusions about who they're up against.

Well, I don’t live in California because I love the politics. I live here because my family and friends are here, and because of the geography. So probably not, but not because of their government.
 
 Edit: I did live in Oklahoma for about seven years. There were things I can look back and say were better than here (sense of community, as in if the older person in the neighborhood got sick the neighbors signed up to mow their lawn… that actually happened once). There were differences I appreciated but had costs (greater value on self reliance than here versus expectations of government). And things I hated (the casual sexism in stratified gender roles, that sort of thing). The weather was horrific. The people were lovely, much nicer overall. I moved back for many reasons, but mainly the weather and wanted to raise my kids in my home State. They had as many misconceptions about California as admittedly I had about them moving there. 

Coming back to this a bit, I thought I'd provide a bit of context for the typical (from a gun person perspective) on inclusion of selective fire as part of the definition of an 'assault rifle' and one possible explanation for why the term 'assault weapon' seems so hard to pin down.
 
For someone with a historic interest in military firearms, the 'assault rifle' is an actual thing.  We know what it is and what characteristics define it.  We can even point to a specific gun and say: "this is where it all begins..."
 
We might debate whether 'this' gun or 'that' gun is an 'assault rifle' or a 'battle rifle' (gun nerds can be as bad as Hero gamers tearing apart a character sheet -- well, maybe not that bad), but we can agree on what isn't an 'assault rifle' and selective fire is part of the core definition.
 
'Assault weapon' as we are seeing, is a nice vague term that sounds threatening, but that we're having a hard time (though we haven't really dug that deep into things here) actually defining it.  Sort of like 'pornography' - "I know it when I see it."  Or, more simply, it's whatever I say it is.
 
For anyone interested in a bit of military history:
 
 

I'm going to insert a quibble here.
 
Even if you don't know the sharp edge cuts and the pointy end goes in the other person, as long as you can at least figure out which part to hold onto you can do a lot of damage with a knife.
 
On the other hand, while firearms are certainly more dangerous than a knife in most situations, I can't tell you how many new shooters I've worked with who can't figure out how to load a firearm without physical  assistance and multiple repetitions or have shown up to shoot without the correct ammunition to even fit into their firearm.
 
While one should always assume a firearm is loaded as a matter of best practice, an unloaded firearm is no more dangerous physically than any other paperweight of similar size and mass.
 
Yeah, I really don't have an issue with a training requirement before someone is allowed to own a gun.

Note: I'm responding to this quote first, but don't take the length of the post as I continue on into the weeds personally, Tricksta. I just found myself expanding on a thought that started here.
 
Microstamping isn't really viable. But, let's say it works exactly as advertised. The police recover a spent casing at the scene of a crime. They run it through a database and determine who the last owner was. Does this solve the crime?
 
Another point Stewart makes is that it should be easier for the ATF to trace gun transfers. Which they can already do.  Do gun traces solve crimes? These are essentially the same result as microstamping. I don't know the answer to that, because Google doesn't return any results for searches for crimes solved by ATW traces (and you can't prove a negative). I suspect the number of crimes actually solved by ATF transfer traces is low, because most crimes are committed by people who aren't the original owners. In the case of mass shooters, most of those (I'm guessing) seem to be legally obtained, but ATF traces are a moot point, because the person is usually caught or killed without the need for a trace.
 
But, let's look at this more optimistically and say that microstamping and better ATF tracing of firearms increases the solve rate for homicides by a significant amount. Does that prevent gun violence? I don't think it would. The death penalty isn't a deterrent, so I doubt an increased chance of getting caught would be.
 
So, even with the best rose-colored glasses on, these things that sound like good, "common sense," ideas just aren't going to curtail our murder rate.
 
Which is another lie told by Stewart in that interview, using statistics. Here's a decent, unbiased (as far as I can tell), analysis of gun death data from Pew:
 
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
 
So, how is Stewart lying about the increased number of murders? He isn't. But he is using the numbers disingenuously to sow fear.*
 
 
So far, so good. The number of gun homicides has clearly gone up. Horrible. We must do something. Stewart says we must reduce the number of guns (probably won't do squat), fund the ATF (agreed), research gun violence (agreed), require microstamping (disagreed), while Fox News says we all need to fund the police better (agreed, but not for their idiot reasons), and all go out and buy a gun (disagreed), because blood is flowing in the streets! Chaos! Calamity! (disagreed, as denoted by the sarcastic exclamation points).
 
OK, so what's the problem? The problem is that the number doesn't have context. Fortunately, the Pew report seems to be pretty clear at providing context:
 
 
OK, we can all breath a sigh of relief. Numbers are up, but it's not quite as bad as the raw numbers show, since our per capita rate is only slightly up.
 
Well, there were still 45,222 gun deaths in 2020, according to CDC data. That's a lot of people dead. This is a picture of a 44,000 people protest in Vienna, and it doesn't even have all the people in it:
 

 
Imagine the United States losing all those people in 2020 from gun deaths. If we could reduce that, we could save a lot of people.
 
According to the CDC, there were 3,358,814 deaths in the US in 2020. I don't think I can find a picture of that many people in one place.
 
The percentage of people who died that died from firearms:  45,222/3,358,814 = 0.013463, so about 1.35%.
 
Now, saving some of those 45k+ lives is a good thing. But you aren't very likely to get shot just walking down the street or engaging in normal daily activities like going to school, going to the movies, going shopping, etc. You might, but it's unlikely.
 
How's our overall death rate looking? Surely we're dropping like flies, right?
 
Here's a sortable ranking of death rates from World Bank. The numbers are from 2020 and per 1000 population. The whole list is rather long, but here are some highlights:
 
Bulgaria is the winner with 18
Ukraine is 3rd with 15.9
Russia is 7th with 14.6
 
OK, that was just to show the higher end of things and the Ukraine/Russia pairing. Not to pick on them, but to give a baseline. Let's look at some countries who have it "good," or at least should: Canada, Sweden and Japan. Just pulled those out of a hat b/c they're frequently mentioned as pretty decent, civilized places.
 
Canada in 84th place at 8.1
Sweden in 50th place at 9.5
Japan in 29th place at 11.1
 
OK, I thought those numbers were going to be better, especially Japan.
 
How about the US?
 
USA in 38th place at 10.3
 
What does this mean? Means we're not quite as horrible as some people would have us think, but we're also not as awesome as others would have us think. We can do better, but we could do much worse.
 
And why did I zoom out to deaths in general vs. gun deaths? Partly for the obvious perspective. We could reduce gun deaths to 0 and it wouldn't move our death rate dial by very much at all. The panic is disproportionate to the threat. This does not mean we do nothing, it means, as the Hitchiker's Guide reminds us:

So, my first point in all of this is we can, and should, approach the problem rationally.
 
My second point is that just as "national death rate" is too broad in scope, so is "gun violence" or even "homicide rate."
 
I'll reiterate my basic stance on the issue again: We need to solve root causes. We need to interpret the data not for the sake of drumming up fear for our proposed solution (including that of "do nothing" that some hold), but for a study of the causes of violence and homicide. At the end of the day, acting like guns alone can cause or prevent homicides is not productive. Neither position is true.

And that's why both Stewart and his interviewees annoy me.
 
How much has been spent by either side on root cause analysis and removing the root causes? I'm betting it's a low number.
 
My point is this: We are not a society of Mutant Biker Cowboy Barbarians.
 
We're a Confederacy of Dunces ruled by an Idiocracy.
 
 
 
 
*Note: That sounds nefarious. I don't think Stewart is nefarious. I think he cares deeply and is simply engaging in his own fears and spreading them around due to not looking at the subject dispassionately.

I saw that. Stewart's argument is kind of weak when "children" are defined as up to 21* years old in those stats, and the majority of those deaths are gang violence related. The more accurate conclusions from that "statistic" are that a) statistics can lie to play on emotions, and b) gang violence and diversion needs to be addressed. To address the number one killer of children, as Stewart laid it out, you would first spend massive funding on gang diversion and gang intervention (encouraging and teaching gangs how to resolve conflicts without killing one another) programs across the country.
 
The fact that we have a politician sitting there who couldn't come to that simple counter to Stewart's argument and that Stewart has (I've recently watched several of his "take down" videos regarding different topics recently) has begun restoring to poor research and talking over his interviewee are both disheartening.
 
My takeaway? The best argument for taking weapons from the population is that we have become an infantile society who as a whole doesn't possess the capacity to be trusted with the power over life and death. People can't even sit down and weigh the pros and cons of an issue with each other from different ideological standpoints without resorting to dirty debate tactics (Stewart) and without the awareness required by their office of public responsibility (any of his victim "interviewees").
 
I'm saying this as a fan of Stewart who mostly agrees with him and respects a lot of the things he's done. He's become deeply (or at least demonstrably) emotional and "fed up" when it comes to 2nd Amendment issues the last few years. He needs to get back to good research and critical analysis of all of his information sources, and be more aware of his own confirmation bias.
 
 
*Edit: That 21 is likely wrong. It looks like the CDC is currently using 19 years old as the break point, and that's likely the source Stewart was using. That same data shows that firearms take over as the leading cause of death starting at age 15. Which reinforces the point about gang activity being the root cause here.
 

True enough, that’s not the 20th century use really. The point definitely is supported by that, that these terms in common usage tend to change and don’t belong to the originators (who would have balked at the “classical liberalism” evolution which is typically socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and extremely moderate by today’s political standard). Individual autonomy, limited government, social freedoms, and particularly a focus on political freedoms and freedom of speech. Government by rule of law. All of that remains very appealing to me. 
 
 

True enough, that’s not the 20th century use really. The point definitely is supported by that, that these terms in common usage tend to change and don’t belong to the originators (who would have balked at the “classical liberalism” evolution which is typically socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and extremely moderate by today’s political standard). Individual autonomy, limited government, social freedoms, and particularly a focus on political freedoms and freedom of speech. Government by rule of law. All of that remains very appealing to me. 
 
 

The definitions provided by the attendees appear pretty sorry, and it is also a bit of a trap because “Woke” is a slang term which is changing in common usage - whatever the origin. Currently it’s something like “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice”.
 
“Woke” comes up in my Bay Area governmental DEI trainings all the time, and has been used by trainers in every way from the original one (related to awareness of societal racism) to a general “Pro progressive” context to one related to “allyship”. It is poorly defined, and candidly is something of a pejorative as well at this point (the clients who receive our services often use it in a way similar to the term “Karen”). I suspect this is something of a campaign by conservatives in the same way liberal took on negative tones, and it’ll likely be similarly effective. While I describe myself as a liberal, in the sense of classical liberalism, pretty much nobody running for elected office does so using the term “Progressive” instead. 

I blame Newt Gingrich for many things. His interview on crime remains timeless, when he stated (to paraphrase, in response to declining FBI crime rates) “you can have your facts, and I’ll take how people feel every time”. 
 
That’s pretty much where we are at with American politics these days. 

Open bolt designs are typical only in submachineguns and machineguns.  You don't generally find them in firearms intended to fire in semi-automatic even with military/police guns (they do exist though).  Open bolt does terrible things to your accuracy, so anything where 'semi-' isn't included as an afterthought is generally closed bolt.
 
 
And this is why even 'reasonable' gun people tend to be resistant to additional legislation.  Owning an unregistered fully automatic weapon is illegal in the US.  Owning unregistered parts to make a firearm fully automatic is illegal in the US.
 
Typical response - let's make more stuff illegal...
 
Even before 3D printers, it's not particularly hard to build a submachinegun.

Through what time period are we considering?  And does the firearm have to have had adaptations made to its form or functions?  How different does a civilian firearm have to be from a military-issued firearm of similar type and capabilities in order to not be considered a 'weapon of war'?  Can a rifle chambered in .22LR ( a rimfire cartridge) be considered a 'weapon of war'?
 
 
So pretty much every semi-automatic centerfire rifle with a detachable magazine and a barrel length of less than 20" (roughly), assuming by 'weapon' we are only referring to rifles.
 
Fairly broad, but I can think of a few rifles that would not be covered by it such as any Pistol Caliber Carbine (PCC - based on cartridge length and I'm assuming you're going by overall length and not case length) and rifles such as the Springfield Armory M1A (civilianized M-14, overall length is 44.33" in Standard Issue configuration) or the Soviet SKS rifle (doesn't have a detachable magazine) which would likely still cause appropriately minded activists and politicians heartburn.
 
I'm also assuming you're not intending an overlap in definitions with 'weapon of war'.
 
What is the concern with semi-automatic?  The action type has been in use since the 1890s, though it didn't see much in the way of military adoption in rifles until the 1940s - which is still 80(ish) years ago.

Just as an observation, the 'extremism' issue can likely be put down to the regular use of both vague and inflammatory rhetoric by politicians and activists - mostly to garner attention in a saturated media environment and to generate passion in their targeted base.
 
Simply put, it's click bait.  Not to say there aren't people who hold extreme views, but rather that you have to state extreme positions to get anybody else to pay attention to you - all while not actually saying anything legally actionable which can be held against you.
 
The Tennessee drag bill - one of the arguments I've heard made is it doesn't really define what it means and does, which makes it easy for both sides to claim it does something different.
 
Moving to gun control, which I at least can claim to have somewhat more knowledge of the topic, I routinely hear politicians going on about 'assault weapons' and 'weapons of war' and I honestly have no idea what they think they're talking about.  Especially if they're waving around a rifle chambered in .22LR and claim they're 'protecting the children'.
 
("Protecting the children" - I think I've heard that one before from other politicians on other topics...)
 
Would anyone here care to define for me what exactly an 'assault weapon' is, or better yet a 'weapon of war'?  Other than buzz words which are supposed to let you know you're supposed to be outraged - sort of like 'woke' and 'socialism' if you're listening to someone speaking on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
 
According to the internet, only around 7% of US adults are veterans so I shouldn't be too surprised that a majority of the people in the US have absolutely no actual experience with military firearms.
 
As a thought experiment, I suggest everyone think back to any time they've watched a news reporter (or political figure) talking about a subject that they have actual personal experience with (your job/field of study - not just read it on the internet somewhere) and consider how many times you've caught yourself talking back to the screen because the person on the air is saying something that is misleading, factually wrong, or just plain nonsense.
 
The reporter, at least, has the excuse that they're reporting on a subject which they really aren't that knowledgeable in (and may have their own axe to grind) and reporting is their job.
The political figure also may be speaking on a subject they really aren't that knowledgeable on (and probably have their own axe to grind) and swaying opinions is their job.
 
Now consider that the above likely holds true on the subjects on which you don't have personal experience...

Yes, the survey that they did was vague and didn't address many important issues.  Still, it is worth noting that most Republicans thing that Muslims can good Americans, that the US government should do more in the way of gun control, and racism still exist in America; while, a majority of Democrats believe that most Republicans are so extreme that they would not agree to those reasonable statements. 
 
Also, apparently most Republicans believe that a majority of Democrats are ashamed to be Americans, want to abolish ICE and have completely open borders.  They also think that most Democrats want the the the US to become a socialist country.  Given how broad of a definition many Republicans have for what is socialism that last one might be true from their perspective.  However, the other ones all seem pretty straight forward and I doubt that the two sides have substantially different ideas on what it means to have an open border or abolish ICE.

Example  given include that the US should have completely open borders, should adopt socialism, that most police are bad people and that not even the law abiding should have access to firearms 
 
No, those are things that Democrats believe that all the majority of Republicans disagree with.

And this is an excellent summary of why I like working in Local government. Putting power in the hands of the barbarians in local communities.

I can understand the perspective. There’s a mechanism to change that Amendment with another one if enough folks agree, after all. It could get there, at some point.

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution
 
 It’s intentionally difficult to remove rights, I’m pretty comfortable with that as it can cut in another direction around those other ensconced rights I was talking about before.
 
 For now, it’s on the same list that I support until it isn’t.

Both Both Republicans And Democrats Severely Overestimate How Extreme The Other Side Is
 
The ironic thing about this is that all the factors that one would expect to lead to more accurate assessments only make things worse.

Unfortunately for 2A rights, I do have to agree that the greater presence of guns in our culture and society has a marked effect on it - that is to say, the greater amount of deaths by guns.
 
It's just not my priority right now one way or another. 😕