Slashdot Mirror
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Gun Shows Using License Plate Readers
HughPickens.com writes According to a newly disclosed DEA email obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives collaborated on plans to monitor gun show attendees using automatic license plate readers. Responding to inquiries about the document, the DEA said that the monitoring of gun shows was merely a proposal and was never implemented. "The proposal in the email was only a suggestion. It was never authorized by DEA, and the idea under discussion in the email was never launched,'' says DEA administrator Michele Leonhart.
According to the Wall Street Journal the proposal shows the challenges and risks facing the U.S. as it looks to new, potentially intrusive surveillance technology to help stop criminals. Many of the government's recent efforts have scooped up data from innocent Americans, as well as those suspected of crimes, creating records that lawmakers and others say raise privacy concerns. "Automatic license plate readers must not be used to collect information on lawful activity — whether it be peacefully assembling for lawful purposes, or driving on the nation's highways," says the ACLU. "Without strong regulations and greater transparency, this new technology will only increase the threat of illegitimate government surveillance." National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says the NRA is "looking into this to see if gun owners were improperly targeted, and has no further comment until we have all the facts."
According to the Wall Street Journal the proposal shows the challenges and risks facing the U.S. as it looks to new, potentially intrusive surveillance technology to help stop criminals. Many of the government's recent efforts have scooped up data from innocent Americans, as well as those suspected of crimes, creating records that lawmakers and others say raise privacy concerns. "Automatic license plate readers must not be used to collect information on lawful activity — whether it be peacefully assembling for lawful purposes, or driving on the nation's highways," says the ACLU. "Without strong regulations and greater transparency, this new technology will only increase the threat of illegitimate government surveillance." National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says the NRA is "looking into this to see if gun owners were improperly targeted, and has no further comment until we have all the facts."
I had assumed that this has been SOP for decades.
the DEA and IRS have been monitoring gun shows, gun ranges, gun any-damn-thing since Obama was elected. i expect this post qualifies as well.
This story will probably get more attention than the CIA torture report. More attention than the NSA surveillance scandal. More attention than just about anything that actually _needs_ attention. Why? Gun nuts are paranoid as hell, that's why. Despite having the security of a firearm they're terrified that the government is going to sweep in and take them away for...what reason again? If anything it's in the US government's best interests for their citizens to be shooting each other dead, saves them ammunition on those shiny new NYPD vehicles with FUCKING MACHINE GUN TURRETS. There is absolutely no practical reason that anyone in the NYPD needs an armoured vehicle with a machine gun turret. Tihs is supposedly to help "fight" terror instead of "create" terror. Oh, of course they won't use them against protestors. Of course they won't.
Sometimes I think Americans are just going to sit on their asses and take all of this bullshit until the government actually does pull a Tiannamen Square on some protest, at which point the guns will finally be aimed at the people who truly deserve to have their heads blown off. Politicians.
Same path as meth, crack, coke, and pot come the guns. The DEA is just doing its job, and when sensible gun regulation is passed (bringing the US up with civilized nations like England and Japan), it will be the DEA's job as well as BATF to disarm the crackpots.
Even a "turd world" country like Venezuela had its gun crime drop to 1/1000 of what it used be a couple years ago because they banned private citizen ownership of firearms. If that country can do it, the US can. Plus, the US can actually enforce the laws. Got a gun? Go to prison. End of story.
If there is such a thing as 'the sound of the NRA deciding that maybe the can agree with the American Communist Lawyers Union on something', I suspect this is what it sounds like.
The NRA always comes out and says stupid things like that if everyone at Charlie Hebdo had had a gun nobody would have died (when in fact many more people probably would have).
If nobody had had a gun then nobody would have been killed (probably).
If you have a gun for your personal use (ie you are not a farmer) then I want you watched as a terrorist, because that's exactly what you are (attempting to hold your physical power over me, without ever having earned my trust to do so).
Sorry if that upsets you Murricans.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
so some random brain-fart email was sent, never acted upon, and this gets blown up into "planned to track owners"
If someone wants to have a serious discussion of the decades of problems the DEA has caused legitimate gun owners, and how they've armed murderers and cartel thugs, let's have a different article series. But I doubt anything would be approved as "story" on this site, it's fading into a place where people just cut and paste "news" from other sites instead of writing original material with sources. Just clickbait tabloid trash site now, how sad.
Taking Uber to gun show, check.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Isn't this more under the jurisdiction of BATFE?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Keeping an eye on the Mexican cartel's major source of weapons seems like a half-sensible suggestion. And since it's at least half sensible, it's completely unsurprising the DEA decided not to actually do it.
But the 2nd amendment says that all Americans should have automatic weapons!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (John Oliver)
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Kraft Shows Using License Plate Readers
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Dog Shows Using License Plate Readers
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Quilting Shows Using License Plate Readers
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Cat Shows Using License Plate Readers
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Boat Shows Using License Plate Readers
DEA Planned To Monitor Cars Parked At Jewelry Shows Using License Plate Readers
I didn't say you were paranoid, you must have imagined that.
ban gun shows.
two kill birds with one stone:
no more illegal surveillance and no more (fewer) armed morons.
It genuinely seems unreasonable to me to simultaneously both be in a public place and while still having any expectation of privacy. Unless they are turning around and arresting the people whose plates they found at such lawful meetings without charging them with a crime beyond the fact that they were there in the first place (which is not illegal) then there'd be something wrong. That's not what's happening, so I don't see the problem.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What about the license place recognition software I've got running on the PC in my car that's connected to the camera looking out the front window that's storing the image, plate number and GPS coordinates in a database?
According to the Wall Street Journal the proposal shows the challenges and risks facing the U.S. as it looks to new, potentially intrusive surveillance technology to help stop criminals.
I don't know whether or not to be surprised that the WSJ (owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox "News") would call technology to read license plates of vehicles parked in public lots "intrusive" - or is it just because it's proposed use includes gun shows?
National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says the NRA is "looking into this to see if gun owners were improperly targeted,
Pun intended?
Anyway, I thought the popular Conservative mantras concerning privacy were (a) there should be no expectation of privacy in public and (b) if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... it's not a problem.
This is what the same people that call Snowden a traitor says while they are absolutely outrage to be spied on when going to a gun shows.
That's so 20th century. Our Government will take care of us, we don't need those pesky rights or even that Constitution. Just let the Government do it all for us!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Police in other countries routinely use ANPRs to record license plates for *all* vehicles that pass them by, e.g.:
Queensland police using GPS technology to track and store thousands of number plates
If you think your government isn't doing this already consider yourself officially nuts. If you think 3rd parties aren't doing this already, with even less privacy controls, consider yourself off-the-planet nuts.
You are obviously confusing civil rights (completely unrelated to guns) ...
You are misinformed regarding the civil rights movement. One of the rights the movement fought for was firearms ownership. Blacks were being discriminated against with respect to firearms too. The KKK boys prefer their victims unarmed when they show up.
We keep on making the mistake of thinking it's about guns and thinking that a reasoned discussion is going to happen. They have them as a symbol - a combined flag and penis substitute instead of the useful tool that gun owners in other places see them as. The mere situation where they vehemently insist that sporting clubs are a "well organized militia" shows how far it has diverged from anything resembling reality.
They want the reward of military grade hardware without the responsibility of being in the military. All glory, no guts. I'm amazed that they don't get called out as cowards more often. So to me it looks like a statement of someone who wants all the entitlements of being a citizen while shirking the responsibility. They like to call up the ghost of George Washington but I doubt he'd think they are worth spitting on.
Our gun laws worked exactly as advertised, after a string of US style mass shootings in the late 80's / early 90's the laws banning semi-automatics were introduced, the catalyst being the Port Arthur massacre that claimed 30+ lives. Since the laws were introduced 20+yrs ago there has not been another mass shooting in this country. Since mass shooting had been rare the effect on the murder rate was insignificant. Gun deaths are still around 200 souls per year, there are towns in the US that have a higher rate than our entire country, this fact has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with the culture inherited from our colonial past.
This may be extremely difficult for an American to understand but "self-defence" is not a valid reason for granting a gun license in this country. Nobody living here needs a semi-auto rifle/shotgun, and very few of us would want one anyway. However before you start raving how stupid we Aussie's are, what other country can you name where the leader can go for a regular morning jog in the street without a small army of heavily armed body guards following him around?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
especially for the government spies in these caverns http://is.gd/h8hinX (It's a dream job)
This article is very old "news". In Sacramento, there was a "big" news story last summer about the local police (and presumably everyone else up, down and sideways in that food chain) were using cameras to snarf every license plate as cars came into the State Fair. They bragged at how many arrests they made from this practice. Presumably, the "success" of this will lead to more of the same all around. Many (most) of our big cities have license plate reading cameras and SW at major choke points (bridges, etc,) and monitor traffic in real time. All in the name of "safety".
I guess the plates are coming in with me then.
Except for some state chapters, it's ignored the 2nd amendment. The NRA was founded as a gun organization, so at least it doesn't pretend to protect all your rights.
> Clearly the NRA is far more successful than the ACLU
The NRA has 10x the membership of the ACLU (5M vs 0.5M), 2.5x the budget of the ACLU ($255M/yr vs $100M/yr) and spends it all on a single issue. No wonder they are more successful.
The murder and kidnapping rates in Venezuela have skyrocketed. I don't know where you get the 1/1000 figure (but i would wash my hands if i was you.)
This story will probably get more attention than the CIA torture report.
The reason why it can and should get more attention is that it's obvious even to a three year old such monitoring is wrong, whereas torture is an issue that's very much up in the air as to being reasonable to use - but there's no question the people it was used against were ACTUALLY criminals.
Nothing says "false moral equivalence" more than equating making known terrorists who have been captured in combat a little uncomfortable for a while, equal to clamping down on people who may be engaging in Thought Crime for acts that aren't technically illegal yet .
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see increasing use of privacy screens on license plates.
Guns don't make a populace harder to control, and haven't for some time. A modern military full of trained soldiers can effortlessly contain even the best armed populace. A bunch of gun nuts and their toys don't have the resources to compete with a standing army...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
" NRA is "looking into this to see if gun owners were improperly targeted,"
I don't know who else would be targeted at a gun show so once the NRA picks up it's batphone you can bet the DEA will be as marginalized as the ATF (understaffed to monitor firearms nationwide, directorless for 7 years, etc), effectively ending the war on drugs.
> Clearly the NRA is far more successful than the ACLU The NRA has 10x the membership of the ACLU (5M vs 0.5M), 2.5x the budget of the ACLU ($255M/yr vs $100M/yr) and spends it all on a single issue. No wonder they are more successful.
The NRA's power is the membership not the money, a membership that shows up on election day. Organizations that deliver voters beat organization that can only deliver money.
When the government comes out and says anything resembling "planned", "suggested", "considered", etc., it really means that they've been doing it for decades
No matter if the American government has carried out this 'car plate scanning' thing for decades, this announcement by itself is a PSY-OP and this mark the beginning of the government of the United States of America launching PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE on the Citizens of the United States of America
In other words, the government of the United States of America is no longer a government of the People, by the People and from the People --- The government of the United States of America has become a government AGAINST the People
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They just want to confiscate some weapons so that they have more to ship off to Mexican drug cartels.
The point wasn't whether they did it, but that they were planning to. Hence the word."planning" in the title. And you want your readers to think slashdot is trash? Why, so that they'll leave amd there can be a greater share of shills like you here?
And how do we know this is not already being done by Google, or Microsoft or others. At Gun shows, Mall parking lots, car dealerships and other places in order to get data to sell or collect marketing information. The technology is out there, we don't have the political will to stop it. Privacy died the day the microchip was created.
Guns don't make a populace harder to control, and haven't for some time. A modern military full of trained soldiers can effortlessly contain even the best armed populace.
Not necessarily if the standing army comes from the same population as the civilians and is sympathetic to their grievances. The military may ignore orders and stay in barracks or refuse to fire upon civilians, as occurred when Soviet hardliners tried to prevent the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Or members of the military may actually join with rebellion citizens, as in the US Civil War.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
All firearm deaths
Number of deaths: 32,351
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.4
> NRA is "looking into this to see if gun owners were improperly targeted,
For once the gun owners are targeted... They usually are the one targeting peoples (mostly their own family).
By comparison, in Europe with strict gun control, 3 to 40 times lower death rate by fire arms,
United Kingdom: 0.25
France: 3.01
Germany: 1.24
Italy: 1.28
Spain: 0.62
Sweden: 1.47
Norway: 1.78
Actually, history has proven that no military, no matter how powerful, no matter how brutal, can ever conquer an armed civilian population.
Look up Hungary in 1956.
Or Warsaw in 1944.
After the remaining population had been expelled, the Germans continued the destruction of the city.[7] Special groups of German engineers were dispatched to burn and demolish the remaining buildings. According to German plans, after the war Warsaw was to be turned into nothing more than a military transit station,[73] or even an artificial lake[150] â" the latter of which the Nazi leadership had already intended to implement for the Soviet/Russian capital of Moscow in 1941.[151][152] The demolition squads used flamethrowers and explosives to methodically destroy house after house. They paid special attention to historical monuments, Polish national archives and places of interest.[153]
That's what happens to those who think that you can just pick up a rifle and defeat an entire army.
They kill you, then burn you, then stomp you into the ground THEN THEY PUT A FUCKING LAKE OVER YOU!
And if you think that guerrilla warfare is the answer, go over to Spain and ask the Maquis how that goes.
You're basing your ideas on some romanticized form of survivor bias.
Primarily regarding the factors of how brutal and motivated the military is to EXTERMINATE any opposition.
You only need to "conquer" someone if you need them for something later.
If you just need the land or the fillings in their teeth or just don't care...
You want to fight off an army - get an army and A BUNCH OF ALLIES.
In the American Revolutionary War (1775â"1783), France recognized American independence in 1778, Went to war with Britain, and sent its army and navy as well as money and munitions. French intervention made a decisive contribution to the American victory in the war. Motivated by revenge for its losses in the Seven Years War, France began secretly sending supplies in 1775. Spain and the Netherlands joined France, Making it a world war in which the British had no major allies. France got its revenge, but materially it gained little and was left with 1000 million livre in debts.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Certainly not the UK which has gun laws comparable to Australia. I don't know of any other country where you could make this claim, if it's even generally true of Australia, but even if it is, it's a statistical outlier across the world regardless of gun laws. Chances are that if your leader needs no body guard (this was not true even in the medieval era for monarchs), your leader is simply not important enough for anyone to want dead.
So let me get this straight, there is concern that the same organization that couldn't keep track of guns they sold as they traveled across the border, when that was the entire intent of their program, is thinking about tracking cars of people who attend gun shows?
LET THEM! There is no way to keep your identity safe than to put it in the hands of a government organization that won't be able to do diddly squat with it, due largely to their own incompetence...
And since it comes up any time guns are mentioned... On the topic of gun regulation I have only one think I want to see, That stupid law that forbids the government from tracking statistics on gun crimes (where criminals got the guns etc.) repealed.
We can close all the loopholes we want, but if the criminals aren't buying guns from gun shows, then what the hell good did it do us? The last study (done in 1997 interviewing inmates in federal penitentiaries, mostly for crimes committed prior to the Brady bill) suggests that 2% of guns used in crimes came from gun shows... An easier target would be the 15% of them who got them from retail stores, or 15% who got them from drug dealers, or the 35% who got them from family or a friend.
I've no idea how accurate those numbers are after numerous changes in gun legislation over the past ~20 years... but if get that data, then we can start making decisions on regulating guns in a meaningful way. Personally I thinking given what data we have the answer doesn't seem to be monitoring gun shows, it seems to be requiring gun owners to lock up their guns... but with out any recent data even that's a shot in the dark... So lets get the data to make rational decisions... or we could keep running the government like an internet comments section and concede every point to the loudest angriest person who doesn't mention Hitler.
There's a gun show at the Dulles Expo Center (Chantilly, VA), just about every month. Part of the Expo Center's building complex was sold (or maybe leased?) by Walmart a few years ago, so they share a joint parking lot. There is also a Holiday Inn, small strip mall, and about six fast food restaurants. Weekends of the show, the parking lot is typically full, and there are plenty of police casing the whole area. I've never actually stepped foot inside the Expo during one of these (we frequently grab groceries at Wally World), I probably will at some point in the near future, and I'm definitely going to be watching for the license plate scanners.
Just another day in Paradise
"Why are you monitoring perfectly legal activities?"
"To help stop criminals"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I don't remember too many gun owners or right wingers complaining about this http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law-jan-june12-nypd_02-28/ before.
Rights and freedoms are defended not only on the battlefields of our nation's wars but in our daily lives. And when we can no longer accept the daily cost of rights and freedoms in our lives we cannot have them. The goal can never be to save the last life because we can give up all our freedom and rights and not save the last life. Taking a right or freedom, however justified it may seem, takes it from the hundreds of millions of Americans alive today and the billions to come. It is an extremely serious thing to do. Today it is being done thoughtlessly for our own good in secrecy by people who consider they have the right to do that. They do not.
E Proelio Veritas.
Regulated used to mean well functioning. Clocks were called Regulators.
If they had put Skilled, Easily raised or gun toting kids, it would be more understandable to modern ears.
The founding fathers wanted the average man to know how to use a gun and be able to come the defense of his home and his country.
I do not own a gun, (sword family) but I think that guns safety should be taught in schools. Teachers should be encouraged to get concealed carry permits.
Perhaps also pass some tactics skills training so they can carry at school.
Place those gun nuts under strict surveillance. They're dangerous. Same with "hacktivist", all those computer nerds events should be kept under the watchful eye of the police 24/7. Who know what damage they might do. High-profile arrests and some raids on their homes should pressure them into accepting some good sense in their lives. Act now. Security through social conformity NOW!
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016
I had assumed that this has been SOP for decades.
Given that police use plate scanners routinely to scan parking lots looking for stolen cars, then I have no doubt that they have scanned parking lots of gun shows.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
What is deciding is if they really want a change to risk death. And if enough people want that, change will happen and governments will be overthrown by the population. Or serious change will be received (mixed schools and what not in the US) even without the population having guns.
You neglect, in your theory, the morality of the ruling party that the death-risking civilian is up against. I hold that Gandhi could peacefully & effectively protest British rule in ways that would have gotten him killed in many other parts of the world.
Communists, Nazis, Islamists, numerous other nasty ruling clans throughout history- are all perfectly willing to slaughter people who speak up in opposition to their rule. The young would-be gandhi never gets a chance to get noticed and gain a following because he's killed at the first sign of trouble.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Can someone please explain which right it is that you have not to be looked at when you are in a public place? Last I checked, there is no expectation of privacy in a public place, and rightfully so. There is also no sovereign right to drive, and the conditions of you using the public roadways include having a license, and displaying a license plate prominently on your vehicle. If you do not accept those conditions, you are free to use some other mode of transportation.
This is all very very well-settled law. Why are the kooky right wingers out there on the fringe still insisting on arguing this bullshit? If you're out in public, people can look at you. People can write down your license plate. People can take a picture of you. Period.
The part about tracking license plates at gun shows was one bad enough. The article also went on to say
"The Journal reported Monday that the DEA, an arm of the Justice Department, has been quietly building a database to monitor and store data about vehicles on major highways. Internal documents show the primary goal of the database is asset forfeiture, a controversial practice of seizing motorists’ possessions if police officers suspect they are criminal proceeds. Sometimes, those seizures take place without evidence of criminal wrongdoing."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fe...
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. "
Noah Webster
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason
Co-author of the Second Amendment
"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" (Noah Webster in `An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution', 1787)
"...but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." (Alexander Hamilton
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No. 46.)
"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." (Tench Coxe in `Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' under the Pseudonym `A Pennsylvanian' in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1)
I hold that Gandhi could peacefully & effectively protest British rule in ways that would have gotten him killed in many other parts of the world.
This. Whenever I see someone post the "First they ignore you..." quote, I always respond:
First they march you through hundreds of miles of hot jungle without food or water,
then they shoot you,
then they disembowel you,
then you lose.
- Gandhi, had Japan won WW2
It takes a lot of effort to manage something so bad that you can end up with the NRA and ACLU both on the same side of an issue.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
not located in Buffalo, Albany or NYC. You will see thousands and thousands of "No NY SAFE ACT" signs. In the front yard of house after house after house. Sheriffs are refusing to enforce it. The law is being picker apart by courts and "corrective" legislation. It is hugely unpopular and likely to go away sooner rather than later.
http://americannewsreport.com/...
In Colorado, the gun control folks were handed their collective butts in recall elections despite outspending the 2nd Amendment folks by a very wide margin.
There are still peaceful resolutions to these differences, but it certainly seems that it is more likely than ever that some gung-ho prosecutor in NYS will go after someone using provisions of the SAFE Act and will find that there are a lot of people ready to show up armed, like in the Clive Bundy situation.
As a CCW holder, I have already been fingerprinted by the Sheriff's office, photographed, background-checked by the FBI, and paid cash money for the process. But every time I buy a gun, it takes about 1 hour to show my CCW, fill out more paperwork, get all the background stuff confirmed, undergo the probative questions of the FFL from whom I'm buying (trying to see if there's any reason to deny the sale, e.g. if they thought I was drunk).
Last time I voted, I walked up to the empty desk, signed my name (no picture ID check), poked a few buttons on a video screen and walked out. Oh, and 20 years ago I filled out a postcard (name and address) to register to vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
Low, to be sure, but the rate of similar crimes pretty much equally low before the laws.
And even the Port Arthur massacres were not really aided too much by the semi-automatic nature of the weapons. Bryant could have executed people at point-blank range with 6-shot revolver, either reloading or changing weapons (after the first magazine was emptied in his first semi-auto rifle, he did just that changed to the next rifle.
Those plates have pretty sharp edges. They'll just get you for possession of a concealed weapon...
In this case it's a large swath of people being spied upon, and not those open-carriers you so detest. Because every gun owner should be spied on extra according to your petty grudge, as if that's sone sort of poetic justice?
Good to know you won't stand up for those who've done you no wrong, let's not be friends.
> Despite having the security of a firearm they're terrified that the government is going to sweep in and take them away for...what reason again
There's ample evidence of this happening since it happened over and over again in the 90s under Clinton/Reno.
From WSJ article on same topic:
The Journal reported Monday that the DEA, an arm of the Justice Department, has been quietly building a database to monitor and store data about vehicles on major highways. Internal documents show the primary goal of the database is asset forfeiture, a controversial practice of seizing motorists’ possessions if police officers suspect they are criminal proceeds. Sometimes, those seizures take place without evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
yea!
the 1/1000 claim is meaningless out of context. If it dropped from 1 crime per 100000 people to 1 crime per 100000000 people then who cares, since it was a non issue to begin with? Odds ratios are often used to obscure statistically significant but effectively inconsequential effects. If it dropped from 1 crime per 10 to 1 crime per 10000 then that might be significant assuming the crimes did not simply shift to other weapons. When people harp on one specific crime instead of overall crime, they usually want to hide that there was no overall effect since being robbed at gunpoint or knifepoint has no difference from the victims perspective. This is why medical research uses overall mortality as the endpoint since administering cyanide will reduce heart failure deaths to 0 in that cohort. Who cares if there were 0 gun deaths if the murderers all transitioned to knives so the rate was unchanged?
Interesting that this program was going to be tested in Phoenix. The Phoenix are is ringed by freeways that are all equipped with revenue-generating speed cameras. Apparently, these cameras can do more than one thing. So much for the tired old bromide that "You have nothing to fear if you're not breaking the law [speeding]."
The above is a great example of how divorced from reality things get. When English doesn't do the trick the technique appears to be to speak in loophole weasel - attempting to redefine the English definition by pointing at very poorly drafted legislation.
Hence the pi reference - yet another case of shifting goalposts from where everyone expects them to be to "win" an argument. Your redefinition makes no more sense than redefining the ratio of the circle to something that doesn't work.
Also how can you call shambolic gun clubs that call for nanny state measures like expanding government to provide armed guards in schools (while simultaneously calling for small goverenment) "well regulated"? They can't find their ass with both elbows.
I find it hilarious that when we are talking about selective surveillance of people of color, people in low-income communities, and Muslims, nobody seems to care. But if you decide to start spying on white people who go to gun shows, suddenly it's some kind of affront to Freedom.
As I have had to mention to you people before, it doesn't matter one iota what James Madison wrote in his diary, what Thomas Jefferson told a reporter, or what Ben Franklin wrote in the 1775 edition of The Poor Mans Almanac. What matters is what is codified in law, and these so-called geniuses were too damned lazy to articulate their ideas into something more substantial. It would not have hurt them one bit to add a couple more sentences into each Amendment, specifying exactly what they meant, but they didn't. So as written, I want my goddamned tank, my fucking rocket launcher, and 5 briefcases of yellow cake please. You don't need to worry why I want them, it's my RIGHT!
[citation most fucking certainly needed]
Please provide an authentically sourced LAW from this time period that required all "able-bodied" men to own a firearm. I don't think you can. You MAY find a STATE law requiring members of its MILITA to own firearms, but there is no blanket armament law that exists or has existed since the Constitution has existed. Your move, snookums.
NOTE TO OTHER READERS: Please FORGIVE my over-use of CAPITALIZED words in this post. THAT AC is evidently 4 years old and as such, my rhetoric has been adjusted to a level they might understand.
By your reasoning, yes, they do. You want to claim 2A is absolute, so you should have no objection to EVERY amendment being literally absolute.
And you can possess whatever type of armament you wish, in any quantity, but that doesn't mean keeping them goes unpunished-------you will not see what I did there. You will tell me you did, and then proceed to tell me how wrong I am, so I'll go ahead and refute that responses as well: YOU, yourself, have on several occasions in this thread advocated for us to interpret the 2A based on what the Founders "meant", debated about, wrote newspaper articles on, etc and how overthrowing a tyrannical government was what they just got finished doing. This is meant to justify your gun love. However, in the same vein, the reason they put the 1A in was that people of the time were being persecuted, prosecuted, and executed for SAYING things about the persons in power. Therefore, just as you argue for the 2A, it was meant to be taken literally, so no, you cannot throw me in jail for yelling fire in a theater. But your argument states that it's ok to limit, VIOLATE even, my rights. It's typical hypocrisy. You don't want people calling you a poopyhead but you want the means to kill them if they do. That's called having your shit cake and eating it too.
Your post is full of fail smothered in failsauce.
First, do please define "well regulated", "militia", and "arms".
I read a short story a few years ago that postulated a similar situation.
What if Germany had won the war? They would take all Britain's possessions, including India. Gandhi thought he could peacefully coerce the Germans into freeing India. The German commander had him shot.
I forget the author and the title, but googling just now reveals this story by Harry Turtledove that is probably it.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Neither supported by, nor opposed by, theConstitution is NOT THE SAME THING as "Constitutional"
The Constitution specifically provides for a "right to bear arms", a right to "free speech", a right to be "secure in your papers" etc, therefore THESE things are "Constitutional Rights". The Constitution also specifically prohibits certain things, which are therefore "Unconstitutional". Slavery WAS, like most things in the realm of human events, history, and practice neither explicitly established, nor explicitly prohibited, in the Constitution; it was tolerated by the Constitution, and several of the founders wrote that they expected it to go away on its own, or aided by the overall language of the Constiution about the rights of "all men" within several generations. This was a compromise needed to unite both slave states and free states in the rebellion against King George. Part of that compromise equation was the so-called "three-fifths clause" which made all "non-free persons" (whether they were white or black SLAVES (both existed at the time) or Indentured servants (which ALSO existed both among blacks and whites at the time)) count as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of allocating seats in congress (intended to allow the slave states to have a reasonable presence in congress and therefore be willing to join the new nation, but not enough seats to let them expand slavery into more places in that new nation). The 13th amendment finally made slavery officially "Unconstitutional", but it was never actually a "Constitutional" institution in the first place, just a tolerated thing.
History matters, and claiming slavery was originally Constitutional, or that it was anywhere other than in the south-east quarter of the country, does a grave injustice to all the Americans of all ethinicites who were always opposed to it. Many famous founders like Ben Franklin were hard-core abolitionists, and many blacks in early America (in the Northern colonies) were NEVER slaves and indeed served in the original revolutionary war (one is in the famous painting of Washington in the boat crossing the Potomac).
That, like the rest of the document is WONDERFUL. Let me explain:
1. Without that clause, the United States would not have formed (the Southern Colonies were in no hurry to rebel against King George, whose armies and tax men at the time were only causing trouble up in the Northern Colonies) and without the United States forming, the Civil War approx 80 years later would not have permanently ended slavery.
2. That clause, as you will note by re-reading it, NEVER says that blacks are any less human or of any less value than whites. It only says that persons who are not themselves free, cannot be counted and used in the apportionment of seats in congress... THIS CLAUSE LIMITS THE POWER OF PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY OWN OTHER PEOPLE. Without this clause, every slave owner would get to count all his slaves and would gain more political power with each additional slave he owned, and slave states would get lots more poltitical power by importing even more black slaves from Africa!
3. That clause does NOT endorse, legitimise, or justify slavery. It simply accepts the fact that some states had slavery (a condition which existed all over the world, and in all racial groups in that century, and the centuries before, and still exists today in certain Muslim-run lands) and places a limit on the benefits of the practice. Without that clause, slave states would have had more political power and all the free blacks of the northern states would have lived under the constant threat of being converted into slaves as a result of any future election or decadal census count.
he was on the moral side of an argument with a nation whose population was (mostly)culturally (and to a sgnificant degree religiously) Chrisitian. This is the same reason who Martin Luther King Jr succeeded in the US (he made a Christian argument to a largely Chrisitan nation).
These VERY SAME "non-violent" arguments would have failed against Soviet Russia, NAZI Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist China, or any Islamo-fascist state. Non-violent protesters in Iran, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc are routinely beaten and killed with no positive change to the societies involved. Where is that guy who stood before the tanks in China? hmmmmmmm????
Interesting..... since a number of gun shows are on private property. What's even worse, Uncle Sam does not know what citizen's privacy really is!
Agenda? An agenda of not wanting people so fucking idiotic about gun safety that they left a pistol in a state that a three year old fired it setting policy. I knew better than that at nine years old. See also the nanny state suggestions about guards in schools because the running gun clubs are too cowardly to act as if they are running gun clubs and do something about gun safety.
They are an utter failure as sporting gun clubs go and wish to extend that failure to political influence by a very strained and disrespectful twist of the Constitution.
I also find it incredibly insulting that you keep on pushing this shit on me as if I am a gullible idiot when you don't even believe it yourself. It's a stupid game where the gun clubs pushes a cynical lie thinking they are fooling a political party and the political party pretends to be fooled so they can have extra numbers and extra funding. Nobody really believes this shit. Your attempted manipulation to swallow this shit that you don't even believe yourself and can only back up with twisted weasel words from NRA propaganda is very annoying.
Did you even read:
Take the bus. Too much effort to save America from tyranny? Sheesh.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.