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News Us politics - read first post before comment

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Sigh....
Here it's 18 for booze, cigs, live dancer's and military service.

16 years old, you can begin to "learn" to operate a 2500lb horizontal guided missile (car)

18 years old, you can get alcohol poisoning, start giving yourself lung cancer, gamble away your college fund and not remember anything about the lady you paid to dance nude in front of you. All in a single night.
And of course start the process of getting all necessary permits for the purchasing of firearms and body armour.
Up to and including an AR-15 rifle.
Colt 6570's are Alberta legal.

You know what the most exciting you can eat at any age here in Canada and well... Everywhere else really?
A bullet! It doesn't ask for ID. :tup:

ETA: Didn't have my morning cigarette yet... That didn’t come out right.

I don't think a minimum purchase age in the US is adequate to do anything other than placate the type of person who look for the apparent quick fix.

It's just not going to help people who die from stray bullets fired from the type of people who fire their guns in crowded civilian areas. Doesn't really matter how old the shooter is. A bullet is a bullet, is a bullet.

It doesn't care about anything beyond the laws of physics.

ETA2: Paid, not payed, dammit NTS grammamar.
 
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An article on the prevalence of gun violence. https://mises.org/wire/there-are-fewer-school-shootings-now-during-1990s

I'm not sure we can even KNOW what's accurate and what's not these days. It's pretty obvious that the world looks like a more dangerous place than it "used to be": And there are a lot of reasons for that floating around.

Part of it is maybe that our memories of "how things used to be" aren't all that good, huh?

And part of it is maybe news coverage is a lot different now than it used to be. 100 years ago, at least where I live, you MAYBE got a weekly paper for local news. That would have had a couple big national stories and MAYBE an international story. (Germany declared war on France.) And you'd have heard what your neighbors had to say at the feed store. If you lived in a bigger city, you'd have probably had a daily paper. It still would have been mostly local news, with some national and a bit of international news. With a lot of news competing for limited space, a school shooting would have made the paper, I suppose, at least in big cities, but, depending on the news day, it might have gotten a paragraph. Might not even have made the front page. From what I found, the first radio news broadcast was Aug 21,1920.That's less than 100 years ago. Our brains are wired to do threat assessments on a scale more like what we were confronted with 100 years ago.

Now? We have practically unlimited space to cover "news" and something has to fill the space. Preferably something that attracts attention and generates ad income. Comparing our perceptions of "danger" between now and the pre-internet era is really apples and oranges, isn't it? Now we are confronted with every scrap of bad news from everywhere in the world, 24/7/365, unless we work at avoiding it.

I'm not saying gun violence isn't an issue. Mostly I'm suggesting the feeling like we're going to hell in a hand basket is more about perception than reality. I'm going to go one step further and say there are plenty of people in this world who are well aware of that phenomenon and aren't above making use of it for their own purposes.
 
I think part of the problem -at least with my own state’s legislature- is the legalisation of marijuana & prevalence of sanctuary cities. Neither of which I’m opposed to, but I think some state officials have gotten too big for their britches.

They appear to have forgotten the Supremecy Clause in Article 6 of the USConstitution, and seem to think their own authoritwah outranks the Federal Govt., & that they can boss anyone who crosses state lines.

The entertainment value alone might be worth some of these idiot laws passing, just to bring popcorn and watch these morons try to go disarm the “underage” soldiers, sailors, airmen, & marines who are based, or train, in this state. :rolleyes: Snort. Not that these pencil pushing nitwits would they themselves attempt to get on base. Nope. As always, write bad laws, and then expect others to enforce them exactly how? Sure. Unenforceable laws. That’s not weakening and destabilising at all. Or worse, create new agencies to attempt to enforce them. f*cktards.

There’s a major difference in not enforcing existing laws, and attempting to enforce contradictory laws. “Do nothing” doesn’t really require a lot out of people. “Do something”? That one takes man power. As I can’t imagine any (currently existing) law enforcement agency being willing to take on going toe to toe with the US Military & against the Federal Govt. I can’t help but wonder if these milquetoast morons also plan to enact the Latin America Plan? Lemme tell ya how much fun THAT was, being stuck on the street with pitched 3 way battles between the military, federal police, local police... all of them fighting each other. Which, sure, may sound like a stretch, except, you know... history. And it’s exactly nonsense like this which has created this problem (federal, state, & local conflict) in formerly stable nations world over. And then they’re so busy fighting each other, former gangs rise to cartel level, allegiances are made with THEM against various agencies... the whole thing is just one ginormous clusterf*ck.

Of course, everyone (military, police, judicial branch, etc.) KNOWS this, so in order to prevent it? The Federal Govt. has to come down hard and fast to put down local insurrection before it starts. Which means LOSING things like sanctuary cities & a metric shit ton of social services and things people actually want and that don’t flat out contradict federal law, as they get swept up in the know-your-place smackdown of Federal enforcement of national laws in a state which thinks it can do whatever the f*ck it pleases.

In 2 years time, I will lay serious money on everyone in my state boohooing over the loss of a LOT of things locals value that have been being let slide, not to mention federally funded programs held hostage for good behavior, and the rise in crime as money as been poured into fighting ourselves (legally, to prevent the next level) instead of minding shop ... and will anyone trace it back to their voting in ridiculous laws? Of course not.

I’ll still bring popcorn to watch their attempts to enforce nonsense. If it’s gonna suck, might as well get some enjoyment out of it. Idiots.
 
I'm still thinking that if people at 18 are too young to drink or buy a gun it only makes sense they are also too young to be tried in court as an adult. And yet, we charge a lot of people younger than 18 as adults for some pretty serious crimes.

@Friday , I can see a similar problem with laws requiring people charged with things like domestic violence to turn in their guns. In principle, I think it totally makes sense that a person who's actively threatening someone shouldn't be allowed to have a gun. But that DOES bring up the question of how you secure the weapons. Who's going to do it, Superman? (Just because it's a problem doesn't mean I think we should avoid the issue. I just think we need to acknowledge it's an issue.)
 
I just think we need to acknowledge it's an issue
Yep. That’s the thing with reactionary laws ... there are usually ways to go about writing them that don’t cause more trouble than they solve... but those laws actually take time to research & craft. They aren’t the instant gratification that people want, and so we end up with STUPID laws, and minor to massive problems following.

And it’s really an across the board issue.

My state became a “consent state” a few years back (you have to consent to having your picture used in any way) as a reactionary law to social media stuff. It has been MURDER on the DV community (also rape, assault, batterY, whole host of things). Other states took their time and crafted their consent laws to include clauses like making your consent not required if you’re filmed in the commission of a crime. Which seems pretty “duh” but since our state didn’t? You can film your parent/spouse beating and raping you on your phone... and not only can that NOT be used in court, but you can be charged with the crime of filming them without their consent.

People just don’t think.

They want a law, they want it now, and hell follows.

Good intentions and all that. :wtf:
 
My state just had to raise the bar on what is required for citizens to put things on the ballot because so. many. stupid. laws kept getting passed that challenge the feds and fuel spiking crime rates or contradict other laws. Ugh. Everyone wants to be king of their hill.
 
Well, I think that the first person going to jail for the Trump issue, will be going in the next few days. Sam Nunberg is refusing to cooperate with the Mueller investigation now that he’s been given an invitation to the grand jury. He’s been on TV all day, saying, “Nope I’m not going to testify and I’m not turning over any information”

Well, I’d be surprised if Mueller team isn’t outside the MSNBC office waiting for him to finish his interview right now, so they can arrest him.....

OMG he’s so stupid!!!
 
Reading much of the above, I can only think of my father, *drafted* to Vietnam at the age of *18*, and who died of acute leukemia at the age of 45. He spoke little, but enough, about his disgust with the military and with weapons themselves, firearms specifically. Who are the "idiots"? Lawmakers actually making a first attempt to protect kids on the issue of mass shootings?

And then there is a kid like my dad who, yep, came back with ptsd, among other issues, and likely died young due to a combo of chemical exposure/ and complications to the bullet wounds he sustained? And who became an adult who couldn't protect his own kid from gun violence.

I anticipate the push back, but I see parallels.
 
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