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Snapchat Wanted $150K To Not Run NRA Ads On Gun Control Group Videos (thenextweb.com)

New submitter bababoris writes: It appears that Snapchat's Rob Saliterman attempted to "encourage" Everytown for Gun Safety to advertise with Snapchat or risk having National Rifle Association (NRA) ads run during their Live Story promoting gun safety. The Next Web reports: "Everytown for Gun Safety is an advocacy group that focuses on gun safety and violence issues. According to Mic, it reached out to Snapchat in 2016 to inquire about an advertising campaign for its #WearOrange event, held on National Gun Violence Awareness Day. A Snapchat representative, Rob Saliterman, responded to Everytown with a quote of $150,000. This would allow Snapchat users to engage with the event using custom filters and lenses created specifically for it. Realizing that another department within Snapchat had undercut him, he fired off an email suggesting that Everytown pay up, lest National Rifle Association (NRA) adverts appear on their videos."

377 comments

  1. That org is garbage by nyet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everytown for Gun Safety has no interest whatsoever in "gun safety".

    1. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Exactly, Shannon Twatts is just in it for money.

    2. Re:That org is garbage by Patent+Lover · · Score: 1, Troll

      Quite true. Interestingly, both sides try to play the fear card. Everytown says "OMG, can you imagine people carrrying concealed weapons leagally all over the country?" NRA says "OMG can you imagine an evil criminal (or lately, a terrorist) with a gun about to shoot you and you have no gun?" Neither addresses the problem which is there are people out there, for whatever reason, that are willing to kill.

    3. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Much like the NRA isn't for gun owner rights, but for the bottom line of gun makers.

    4. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed.. they don't have any interest in gun safety. It is a shill organization funded by Michael Bloomberg’s war chest. He's paying to remove gun rights from the nation while paying handsomely for his own armed guards to protect him from the same criminals that may threaten you.

      What is truly sad is that Snapchat basically blackmailed/threatened the "Everytown" organization that if they didn't pay up they would allow the NRA to run ads.

      In the grander scheme of things... this is graft... this is money for hostages.. this is unethical and sadly for this example... they wanted a chunk of MB's bank account as direct payment to meet his goals.

    5. Re:That org is garbage by jcr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Neither addresses the problem which is there are people out there, for whatever reason, that are willing to kill.

      I reject your claim that the NRA doesn't address this problem. Arming yourself is the best way to have a fighting chance against anyone who's trying to kill you, and the NRA has made that point countless times.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    6. Re:That org is garbage by Patent+Lover · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry, but if someone walks up and shoots you Chicago style, it doesn't matter if you're armed.

    7. Re:That org is garbage by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Informative

      Arming yourself is the best way to have a fighting chance against anyone who's trying to kill you

      "They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.

      "No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.

      "Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.

      "They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."

      "And what difference does that make?"

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    8. Re:That org is garbage by Kohath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It matters that Chicago police and Chicago government spend their time harassing innocent people instead of catching criminals or solving their social problems.

    9. Re:That org is garbage by Patent+Lover · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed. What I meant to bring to the table was that people don't kill each other because they have guns. They kill each other because they're willing to do so. We need to change that.

    10. Re:That org is garbage by cfalcon · · Score: 2

      > Everytown for Gun Safety has no interest whatsoever in "gun safety".

      No, they're just another bunch of gun grabbing tyrants.

      But, the topic isn't about them, and how much they suck. It's about whether it is at all ok for Snapchat to basically try to extort them by asking for cash or threatening to play a countermessage.

      It's phrased cleverly enough to avoid any legal issues, probably- they simply mention that the NRA is talking about buying advertisement time- but that is clearly meant as a threat.

      Anyway, it seems fucking dirty, right? If they are doing this to one organization, they'll probably do it to more. It's probably a pretty effective technique.

    11. Re:That org is garbage by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      For those of us who aren't familiar with this group, could you provide a citation or at least some explanation? I mean I know slashdot is getting more and more right wing, but I think at least pretending that anti-gun groups aren't inherently something we hate would be good.

    12. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, right. Most of the money is in government contracts, which the NRA doesn't give a damn about. Sales to civilians amounts to less than Bloomberg's bedside change drawer.

    13. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong, I'm for gun safety.

    14. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who is "we"? You and who else, exactly?

    15. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People are evil - - that's the unsolvable problem. Cultures butcher out the worst ... or the weakest .... or least honorable ... or least productive - - - if they are fortunate and smart and determined.

      Opinions differ of-course. That's why good fences make good neighbours and foolish tolerate globalist ( or Trotsky DemoRats ) need to be put-down ASAP.

    16. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Arming yourself is the best way of ensuring that you and your loved ones are never more than a couple mistakes away from being shot when a weapon accidentally discharges.

      Just because you, and the NRA, don't understand the statistics, doesn't make it any less true, You're, far, far, more likely to be killed by a firearm kept in the home for defense than you are by an armed intruder. Literally 10s of thousands are killed every year and that's not what the NRA focuses on, they focus on the relatively rare occurrence where you're confronted by a criminal with sufficient time to arm yourself and take the shot. In practice, people rarely have that time. Anybody with a knife within a 20ft diameter around you can easily murder you before you even have the chance to fire on them.

      With guns, the radius is a bit wider and for bonus points, if anybody misses they have a bonus opportunity to hit somebody that has nothing to do with the situation.

      Bottom line here is that only morons and dickless cowards buy into the NRA's notion of self-defense.

    17. Re:That org is garbage by CaptainDork · · Score: 0

      No, but close.

      Most gun deaths are by suicide.

      Next up is accidental discharge,

      After that, it's homicide by someone the victim knows.

      When Americans think about deaths from guns, we tend to focus on homicides. But the problem of gun suicide is inescapable: More than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    18. Re:That org is garbage by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Funny

      but if someone walks up and shoots you Chicago style

      Yeah, that's why I always use MLA style.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    19. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh this idiotic argument again. We just had a wonderful upstanding moron try to murder two accused shoplifters, he had no proof, but he tried to shoot them down as they tried to escape. For shoplifting. Fired six bullets towards a mall full of young kids during the Pinewood Derby, missed every shot. I hope this idiot hangs just like I hope idiots like you swing from the rope.

    20. Re:That org is garbage by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      And.......today I realized that Snowden is a character in Catch 22.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    21. Re:That org is garbage by rtb61 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Yep, super fucking safe. Every idiot moron shooting at every other idiot moron, because they have a gun and they are shooting and they are a threat, this whilst some old pensioners drives off in a old bomb that just backfired. So who do the cops shoot when every moron out there is an untrained fuckwit with a gun, answer, all of them head shots as fast as possible to protect the innocent without guns. You as an amateur pull out a gun firing wildly, I hope a cop puts one into as fast as possible before they target the perp who will likely be firing less often needing to conserve ammo.

      Contrary to right wing insane bullshit, when an amateur in a blind untrained panic shoots, it will kill just as dead, as the criminal shoots. No, amateurs can not protect themselves whilst placing everyone else at risk and they should be charged with murder should they kill an innocent when blindly, firing in panic (the one time I would approve of the death penalty). Amateur put you fucking hand on that gun and know you are risking a death penalty when you fuck up and you will fuck up because you are an amateur.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    22. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? Police are just harassing innocent people in one of the most murderous cities in the nation? Sounds like they're underfunded, overwhelmed and doing their job in that cesspool.

    23. Re:That org is garbage by tsotha · · Score: 1, Troll

      When Americans think about deaths from guns, we tend to focus on homicides. But the problem of gun suicide is inescapable: More than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide.

      It's not a problem for people who aren't suicidal.

    24. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/san-bernardino-shooting/americas-gun-business-numbers-n437566

      If the NRA did not give a dam why do the advertise so much.
      You are in Danger, Arm your self.
      Be the Good Guy with a gun.

    25. Re:That org is garbage by Bartles · · Score: 4, Informative

      Just google "everytown false". Slashdot is not getting more right wing, it is getting more liberal in the classical sense. It's your relative point of view that has changed.

    26. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only way that makes you safer is because statistically you will be shot with your own weapon and either end up nice and safe in hospital, or a hole in the ground permanently safe from harm.

    27. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No different than the for-the-children gun 'safety' types saying "you don't need guns, you just need government to protect you".

    28. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a euphemism for "gun confiscation"

    29. Re:That org is garbage by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Yeah, suicide is painless.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    30. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Most gun deaths are by suicide.

      Next up is accidental discharge,

      After that, it's homicide by someone the victim knows."

      See Hemenway, Private guns, Public Health, 2004 (more recent research may differ). Hemenway cites numerous scientific studies, explains his sources and methodology, points out weakness of the information, explains original research--such as going around to 50 States governments and acquiring as much raw data as possible/the states were willing to give in some instances.
      His conclusions:
      Suicides account for around 55% of gun deaths
      Accidental discharge only accounted for a few hundred out of around 28-31,000 total gun deaths in his book (number varied over years, averaged around 29,000). Yes, subtract suicides
      Being shot by someone else would have been around 14,000
      Comment: this is only the number of people who were confirmed gun deaths. It would not include people who's bodies were subsequently destroyed, never found, or the cause of death not determined. The actual number killed by guns would be higher. I don't know by how much. Probably more than 100 and less than 2,500, just to take a wild guess. I don't know if bodies found years later were added to 'yearly' totals (and due to inconsistent state laws/regulations, that may vary).
      Comment: Hemenway is very pro gun regulation. However, the largest section of the book is looking at studies to determine the effectiveness of particular regulations. He overtly states in so many words, a regulation that is not effective may make some people feel good, but why bother at worst and at best don't bother.
      Example: in domestic violence cases it is common to require the accused to surrender any guns to law enforcement. He cites multiple studies and came to the conclusion that the evidence showed no difference in the rate the accused went on the kill their spouse between those required to surrender their weapons vs those who were not.
      Comment to comment: Hemenway is reviled by the NRA type camp, but there is a lot in his book that shows a lot of specific regulations do not lower gun deaths. I suggest people use his evidence.
      Comment: what about the number of shootings that were justifiable? Different states and police departments count things differently making tweezing that number out tricky. Counting dead people and cause of death by gunshot is easy. Most states simply do not collect a total on this. Maybe a $5-10 million to study this could come up with a reliable number.
      What about the number of lives saved because someone was armed, and the bad guy backed down? The first thing is, there are no bodies to count, making it harder to get a head count than counting those who were shot. And, if it were me, and I showed a bad guy I had a gun and he ran away, and if I was pretty sure we would never see each other again because we are total strangers, I would probably not call the police and tell them, "Hey, I just waved a gun at some guy...." Google Aseem F. Ayoob, gun safety and training expert. Check out some of his writings, videos.
      Conclusion: if you own guns, for goodness sake take a gun safety course, and take a refresher course ever few years or sooner!

    31. Re:That org is garbage by nyet · · Score: 1

      So get training. It isn't hard or expensive, and compared to police training, its orders of magnitude more effective.

      Police are not a security force. They are not a peace keeping force. Their job is to catch criminals.

    32. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everytown for Gun Safety has no interest whatsoever in "gun safety".

      That's like saying Planned Parenthood has no interest whatsoever in "parenthood".

    33. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea, I read this article and thought it made no sense. A gun safety group not liking the NRA....who teaches gun safety. So after looking at the site for a while, it is clear it is not a gun safety group, it is a group trying to remove guns from everyone. I can see how people can be tricked into these liberal groups now that I have seen one.

    34. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or if they are a half a mile away, or have a tungsten pole in orbit, or using a 30 megaton thermonuclear device, or nerve gas, or a planet annihilating quantity of antimatter...

      Gun nuts just aren't serious enough about their killing methods. Firearms? One person at a time? How 16th century.

    35. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot has always been extremely right wing. User moderated "communities" are always dominated by those who do not work for a living.

    36. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Us has 10x higher gun homicides per capita than UK or Aus so your argument is dead on arrival.

    37. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For some people, absofuckinglutely. I think that line should be bright and well known by all.

    38. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The NRA teaches gun safety for the same reason that they donate to preserve hunting land, it's a CYA for all the irresponsible things they do. We can't possibly be irresponsible, we support gun safety classes, ignore that over there where we're advocating against background checks and reasonable limitations on firearms and the fact that we invented the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

    39. Re:That org is garbage by SpaghettiPattern · · Score: 1

      And.......today I realized that Snowden is a character in Catch 22.

      I see your clever rhetorical figure. Whereby Snowden integrally represents the USA.

      Rather astutely the main issue is merely alluded to in unclear terms. Indeed there's no alternative when addressing bigots.

      --

      I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
    40. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Snapchat just for nlggers? Or maybe it's just for spics? One or both? In any case I heard that it was designed by and for mud people.

    41. Re:That org is garbage by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 1

      the problem of gun suicide

      So... let's outlaw suicide? Wait, it already is. We should outlaw plastic bags too... oh, never mind.

      --
      This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    42. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, these people are only interested in removing the rights of others. Cities are less safe when they outlaw private defense.

    43. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do your cause a disservice when you write. That was very poorly thought out.

    44. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not sure what "shooting someone Chicago style" is, but in Chicago, only the thugs and the cops have guns thanks to the gun grabbing progressives that rule there.

      Try the same crap in Texas where there are several armed, trained concealed carry citizens in any crowd and the felons typically die quickly. It has been proven so many times that the progressives literally had to stop keeping stats on how often a life is saved when a legal gun is either brandished or fired in self defense. That should tell the rational, impartial observer all they need to know about the benefit to society and the individual of legal gun ownership in general and concealed carry specifically.

    45. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      LOL, Try not to project so much. Statistically, conservative right wingers (classical centrists who are for limited government and as much personal freedom as is reasonable) are the working middle class.

      The liberal progressive Democrats are 25X times more likely to be unemployed (or maybe that's unemployable) and 7X more likely to be a criminal.

      http://www.nationalreview.com/...

      (If you can get past the spin at politifact, you can find the actual statistics there on criminals registering to vote.)
      http://www.politifact.com/trut...

    46. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect your argument lacks depth. For instance, if you are burgled, you could stand to lose thousands of dollars. That burglar probably lives by burgling, stealing many thousands worth of value every year from the community at large. Without home owners who are armed, those burglars could continue that way indefinitely. This way, hopefully they eventually get shot. Otherwise, we have the equavalent of slavery as people lose hundreds of hours worth of their time per burgle.
      So...I personally think the value to society of killing the burglar outweighs the risk of death to discharge. Even if the burglar has to steal from 10 houses before being killed.

    47. Re:That org is garbage by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You mean making handguns illegal in Chicago didn't stop shootings?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    48. Re:That org is garbage by ArchieBunker · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Harassing innocent people is a hell of a lot safer than chasing down crackheads and crazy n1ggers.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    49. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I agree with you about the problem. If you want to get rid of that problem, the argument over gun rights vs control is not the answer. I would start by examining the drug war, decriminalizing, and then funding research to deal with addiction. Then start a series of civic efforts that tie social mappings with gang databases and police case records, creating cross spanning social links bolstered by startup businesses (drug use tends to rise as jobs leave).
      It's like kids, if you tell them what they can't do, guess what they're going to do? Better method is to make the channels and put them where they need to go.

    50. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      The NRA has made that point without any data, while the DoJ has data that proves the NRA wrong.

    51. Re:That org is garbage by ravenshrike · · Score: 2

      Remove suicide and illegal ownership by violent felons and gangbangers from those numbers and the statistic is pure bunkem. At worst there is less than a 3% increase in suicides due to gun ownership and even that is heavily disputed.

    52. Re:That org is garbage by ravenshrike · · Score: 2

      We have 1.3-1.8X knife homicides than the UK has total homicides. During the 10 years post Port Arthur, US homicides fell by 5-10 percent farther than Aus homicide rates depending on exact dates used.

    53. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The world is getting more right-wing. Soon you'll be hearing about people who are kind of like Yuppies, but not exactly, and hear things like, "Greed is Good." And basic income will be lost in the noise. As soon as people realize Trump is not Hitler (a low bar, to be sure) they're going to flock to his side. It's like a game of football: the winners of the superbowl become super popular.

      Watch it happen.

    54. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      It has been proven so many times that the progressives literally had to stop keeping stats on how often a life is saved when a legal gun is either brandished or fired in self defense.

      Complete and utter horseshit detected.

    55. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The question is: why are so many gun nuts wanting to commit suicide?

    56. Re:That org is garbage by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Some people simply are not capable of safely handling or owning a firearm. Those people should not have one. Everyone else should have unrestricted access to whatever arms they can afford to buy.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    57. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And if you get hit by lightning, it doesn't matter if you're wearing a seatbelt. So?

    58. Re:That org is garbage by silanea · · Score: 1, Interesting

      [...] Arming yourself is the best way to have a fighting chance against anyone who's trying to kill you in a country where access to firearms is so ubiquitous, cheap and simple that every punk and their dog have one. [...]

      FTFY.

      From a European perspective, the US is just a tiny step up from, say, Mogadishu when it comes to gun-related violence. Over here, shootings usually make national news. That is how rare they are.

      --
      Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
    59. Re:That org is garbage by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

      Their job is to catch criminals.

      No! Their job is to "prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment", as Sir Robert Peel rightly put it.

      Every British, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand police officer is aware of this. The best time to stop a criminal is before the crime takes place, and the absolute best time is before someone becomes a criminal in the first place. This is such an obvious point that you'd think US police officers would know it too.

      If you want to know if the police are doing a good job, don't count the bad guys the cops caught, count the crimes which never happened.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    60. Re:That org is garbage by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      if you are in a car then it doesn;t matter if the car is hit by lightening

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    61. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit, fucking liar, your not counting all the times a bad guy sees a gun and backs off. Guns save thousands of lives every day.

    62. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FAKE

    63. Re:That org is garbage by buss_error · · Score: 1

      Arming yourself is the best way

      to ensure you are a victim of gun violence. That being said, I own home protection weapons. I go the the range at least once a quarter and fire no less than 250 rounds to practice. If I aim at it, I want to hit it. If I don't aim at it, I don't want to hit it. And the next point is; I do own a .45. That isn't for home protection, it's because I like shooting it. For protection, I use a legal length sawed off pistol grip shotgun and a 9mm with frangible rounds. The idiot ammunosexual next door is always talking about how he'd like to "bag" a illegal or crook. With his freakin' Desert Eagle .50 cal rifle. Uh huh. More likely he'll kill me or another neighbor. Remember children a round doesn't stop when it hits what you're aiming for. It keeps going.

      And last, for the love of a God you say you believe in but don't act like it, stop thinking "the libtards are gonna take my guuuunnnnnnsssss!". First, because we're NOT. Second, because you keep driving up the prices - which if you think for a second might be why they keep telling you "libtards are gonna get your guuuunnnnssssss!".

      Sorry to be a jerk about it. This subject vastly annoys me.

      --
      Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
    64. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh go back to your Facebook circle jerks where you can keep telling each other that you right and everyone else is so wrong

    65. Re:That org is garbage by TheReaperD · · Score: 0

      I'm all for legal gun ownership and concealed carry permits with training but, the "good man with a gun saves the day" is complete and utter bullshit (or horseshit per parent post language). An armed gunman is usually taken down by a team of armed and armored police officers rather than a single person though there are rare exceptions and those are usually rare, retired military exceptions. Sorry wannabe terrorist, you just pulled the cop that's a recently retired Navy SEAL member member with honors... good luck (not really).

      --
      "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
    66. Re:That org is garbage by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      You both are talking about different branches of police. Beat cops prevent crime and disorder, criminal investigation police (aka police detectives) solves crimes and catches criminals.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    67. Re:That org is garbage by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      A large amount of illegal firearms in the USA consists of stolen legal firearms. The abundance of legal firearms and the irresponsible carelessness of their owners seriously helps criminals.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    68. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Happens quite a lot, even thou you don't want to believe it does:

      http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-uber-driver-shoots-gunman-met-0420-20150419-story.html

      http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Man-Shot-in-the-Chest-Inside-West-Philly-Barbershop-297176271.html

      http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/26/official-suspect-in-deadly-hospital-shooting-had-lengthy-history-gun-arrests/

      http://citizensvoice.com/news/police-plymouth-homicide-suspect-shot-by-patron-1.1370815

      http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/17251517/churchgoers-subdue-gunman-at-spartanburg-church

      https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2054129059072688443

      http://www.lvrj.com/news/19257519.html

      http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/us/12brfs-GUNMANKILLED_BRF.html?fta=y&pagewanted=print&_r=0

      http://articles.philly.com/1998-04-26/news/25765866_1_andrew-wurst-john-gillette-science-teacher

      And that is what I could find in a 2-sec google search.

    69. Re:That org is garbage by bobbuck · · Score: 0

      I wish I had moderator points. :(

    70. Re:That org is garbage by bobbuck · · Score: 2

      For all the times that fearless murderers ambush armed victims regardless of the mortal risks to themselves and kill "Chicago style," you have a point. As for the other 99.9% of the time...

    71. Re:That org is garbage by bobbuck · · Score: 2

      If the Liberals are not trying to "take our guns" why did DC v. Heller and Chicago v. McDonald go all the way to the US Supreme Court? Were DC and Chicago all for gun ownership and everyone was just confused? It's not that Liberals are going to take our guns; they already have!

    72. Re:That org is garbage by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

      The liberal progressive Democrats are 25X times more likely to be unemployed (or maybe that's unemployable) and 7X more likely to be a criminal.

      So why is it that the red states are the ones that consume the lion's share of the social services, even though California has the highest population and is often considered to have the most illegal immigrants living within its borders?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    73. Re: That org is garbage by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Happens quite a lot, even thou you don't want to believe it does:

      And then there's the fact that brandishing is illegal, so all the times when someone shows someone that they have a gun and stop a crime without even having to point it at the aggressor go unreported. As well, of course, as the times when they do aim, but don't shoot.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    74. Re:That org is garbage by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You as an amateur pull out a gun firing wildly, I hope a cop puts one into as fast as possible before they target the perp who will likely be firing less often needing to conserve ammo.

      Before you get a big fucking hard-on for the police, you cop sucker, consider that there's no shortage of cops who can't shoot straight either. If I had to bet on who was a better shot, between a cop and J. Random hick in sticks gun enthusiast, I'd pick the hick every time.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    75. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... no interest whatsoever ...

      Based on what? From the web-site, they're a one-issue political lobby, standing against the lobbying of 'big' guns, whose power in the US congress is well-documented. The EfGS isn't promoting a no-guns policy and as long as the second amendment is used to endorse home defense, there is little point. It is far better to pressure law-makers in forcing more responsibility into gun ownership and use.

    76. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they are doing this to one organization, they'll probably do it to more. It's probably a pretty effective technique.

      An effective way to loose customers completely. They'll flee the site, they'll stop advertising there - because of extortion. Any kind of material (pages, forums, whatever) can be hosted in so many other places. Every provider has competitors.

    77. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you and me.

    78. Re:That org is garbage by amacide · · Score: 1

      Arming yourself is the best way to have a fighting chance against anyone who's trying to kill you

      That's worked out so very well for the US of A.... The laughing stock of the world where school massacres are common place...

      Tell your daughter you love her before she heads to school.... :facepalm: ;-)

    79. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, are you seriously blaming the suicide rates on guns?

      Care to provide a worldwide stats correlating number of guns and number of suicides (in general) per 1000 citizens?

      Means of suicide can change, but gun availability has little to nothing with suicide rates.

    80. Re:That org is garbage by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      I also wonder how many accidental discharges were in case when a cop was aiming at an unarmed suspect...

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    81. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ohhhh wow you're kind of a moron aren't ya.

    82. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...NRA says "OMG can you imagine an evil criminal (or lately, a terrorist) with a gun about to shoot you and you have no gun?"...

      I don't have to imagine it, I can remember it. Not fun.

    83. Re:That org is garbage by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but if someone walks up and shoots you Chicago style, it doesn't matter if you're armed.

      Handguns, especially in the calibers illegally carried by Chicago's typical ruffian are notoriously bad at actually killing the target. Likewise, a handgun isn't by any means a guaranteed hit to center of mass if it's more than a couple of yards away.

      "The victim has no chance to use their own gun" displays a massive amount of ignorance on handguns and their typical effectiveness.

    84. Re: That org is garbage by jafiwam · · Score: 3, Informative

      Happens quite a lot, even thou you don't want to believe it does:

      And then there's the fact that brandishing is illegal, so all the times when someone shows someone that they have a gun and stop a crime without even having to point it at the aggressor go unreported. As well, of course, as the times when they do aim, but don't shoot.

      "Brandishing" is illegal. This is what brandishing is: "display, indication or threat of use of a weapon for unlawful intimidation purposes"

      Pulling a firearm out because two thugs flanked your car while you try to pump gas is not brandishing, and it's not illegal. Removing a pistol from a concealment holster and holding it pointed at the ground is legit self defense in the face of that kind of threat.

      There are unreported defensive uses of firearms, quite a few actually if you believe the NRA, generally it's because well there wasn't much of an incident and what is there to say? The thugs will almost never report it, as the police are likely to know what they are and what they were up to or they have warrants already.

      I know this stuff is outside your idiom, but would it really be such a burden to actually learn a few of the utmost basics on the topic before shooting your mouth off? It seems like that's the only thing you do here, shoot your mouth off.

    85. Re:That org is garbage by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      So why is it that the red states are the ones that consume the lion's share of the social services

      Two words: Civil War.

      Basically, the Old South (the poorest part of the USA) was colonized because you could grow cotton there in huge plantations. The Civil War, and subsequent technological changes, led to the ruin of what passed for an economy in the South, with basically nothing to replace it (note the exception of the Barony of Iron Mountain (SCA), aka Birmingham, which sat on a helluvalot of iron ore).

      Realistically, if slavery had never been legal in the USA, it's rather likely that the region of the Old South would tend to look like Montana - mostly empty....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    86. Re: That org is garbage by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      The only way that makes you safer is because statistically you will be shot with your own weapon and either end up nice and safe in hospital, or a hole in the ground permanently safe from harm.

      What do those stats look like when the suicides are removed?

      Never mind, I'll tell you, if you ARENT suicidal and you have firearm, it goes back to being much more dangerous to bad guys.

    87. Re: That org is garbage by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      Yeah, right. Most of the money is in government contracts, which the NRA doesn't give a damn about. Sales to civilians amounts to less than Bloomberg's bedside change drawer.

      Uhmmmm... no.

      A few gun manufacturers do sell more to military and police contracts (Berretta, Glock, Sig) most others don't And those that do sell like that, still have huge private sales.

      Look up the numbers some time, some states field the largest standing army on the planet during the deer hunting season. Since the 90's when the last bs number was created, the 350 million or so "firearms in the US" number has gone up by half, or a million per month. The US has somewhere between 500 million and 750 million legally owned firearms in civilian hands.

      Only a very small fraction of those firearms are being used in crime.... the stats that all the other nations like to be horrified about.

    88. Re:That org is garbage by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      The world is getting more right-wing. Soon you'll be hearing about people who are kind of like Yuppies, but not exactly, and hear things like, "Greed is Good." And basic income will be lost in the noise. As soon as people realize Trump is not Hitler (a low bar, to be sure) they're going to flock to his side. It's like a game of football: the winners of the superbowl become super popular. Watch it happen.

      Trump doesn't even have to be appealing in any way for this to happen.

      Take a look at the two top DNC folks now, who are "the leaders" of what the democrats will be doing. Tom Perez Chairman, Keith Ellison vice-Chair. Google these guys and what they have been doing their entire lives, and compare that to what the "centrist" base of the democratic party might want.

      The dems are DOOMED if they can't get control of their radical communist/progressive ideas.

    89. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been to Mog, I've been to Gary and Camden, and I've gotten lost in Brussels. My spider senses but that neighborhood in the "somewhat worse than Camden" category, because your Muslims are armed and much more hateful than the Somali people I've talked to.

      Your news also ignores brown people killing each other. But just ignore me, because your brainwashing makes you feel superior.

    90. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dunno it's not like the extremely vast majority of American counties are "red zones", and most "blue zones" are coastal shitholes for the self-proclaimed tech elite who want to abuse everyone else. It's not like the vast majority of Americans are living in the red areas by default, thus giving you the ability to post this incredibly ignorant and retarded strawman bullshit.

    91. Re:That org is garbage by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Untreated depression is the number one cause for suicide.

      Why didn't you look it up?

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    92. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      where do you get your data?

      http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article9084488.html

    93. Re: That org is garbage by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      You also need to consider how many more gun deaths/crimes occur because of the increased availability of guns

    94. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Source?

      You seem to forget that the number one owner of illegal firearms in the US groups involved in the illegal trafficking and trade of drugs, i.e. gangs. Group who specialize in importing illegal goods. Hmm, where could they possibly have managed to get something illegal? Your assertion is based on the argument that banning firearms has any proven track record of removing firearms from the hands of criminals. This is only true if you cherry pick your statistics. I'll throw out Brazil and Mexico, two countries with extremely strict gun laws, and two countries with some of the highest gun violence rates on earth to counter the assertion that gun laws remove guns from the hands of criminals and I'm sure you'll counter with some BS reason why those countries don't count. "Oh, but they're not first world countries" or "they're really corrupt" or something stupid like that. No, you'll only want to use the countries that support your claim while conveniently excluding the ones that don't.

    95. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The liberal progressive Democrats are 25X times more likely to be unemployed

      Whoah dude, shouldn't most of them be in that one percent, or at least part of the liberal political elite, trying to do something evil to [insert your pet]. That's why you voted for Orange Jesus instead of Gray Satan.

      7X more likely to be a criminal.

      Participating those pro-[insert your pet], anti-[insert your peeve] demonstrations can make anyone a criminal. The other factor must be that constant weed puffing you do in the America.

    96. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is hilarious to me. A gun club I'm trying to join is open to LEOs. I go there regularly as I have many friends there and am able to go with them. Every. Single. Mishap. at the range in the last 25 years has involved an LEO. Every bullet hole in the roof was put there by an LEO. Watching the LEOs do their practice from my standpoint is terrifying that these people are allowed to carry firearms in public. Just a couple a months ago a formal complaint had to be lodged because the range doesn't allow any shooting after 10 PM, and at midnight 3 LEOs broke in (note that they're allowed to go there, but broke in) drunk and started shooting. Of course the department didn't bring any charges against them. Yeah, the fact that your trust police is hilarious to me.

    97. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, in order to prevent monetary theft, we should ban all people from owning money! Makes perfect sense.

    98. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The dems are DOOMED if they can't get control of their radical communist/progressive ideas.

      Agreed. If they can't expel the far-left Progressives, the Democratic party will fade away, Republicans will become the new Democrats (of the classically liberal type) and Libertarians will become the new Republicans.

    99. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More old people. "Social spending" in the United States largely means Medicare and Social Security.

    100. Re:That org is garbage by buss_error · · Score: 1

      It's not that Liberals are going to take our guns; they already have

      Uh huh. Come again, how many guns were seized? Yeah, that's what I thought.

      By the way, DC can't pass any laws that Congress doesn't want them to, and it's not a state. So your first objection is specious as that law dealt more with requiring that arms be rendered safe (EG: Gun locks) when not under the direct personal control (within hand's reach) of a licensed owner and if the second and fourteenth applied to territories and protectorates. You would have been better to cite US v. Miller. As a side note, I follow that DC law with my own weapons. If it's not within hands reach of me, it's unloaded and locked up. That because it makes a lot of sense to do that.

      You do have a very valid argument with Chicago v. McDonald, but NB not one singe gun properly licensed was ever seized. They just refused to license new ones for which SCOTUS very properly thumped their noses for.

      I am not against gun ownership nor are the vast majority of liberals. Yes, I know some are, but there are nut cases in every group. But I do have to wonder how safe I'm going to be if the next door neighbor's house burns down. He's got several pickup truckloads of ammunition. And it's old, so I'm sure some of it is unstable. Let me run that by you once again - several pickup truck loads. And there's nothing illegal about it. Just heck of unsafe.

      But it serves the purpose of the NRA and gun advocates to have an "Enemy" in liberals. Otherwise it wouldn't be a hot issue that gets people out to pay membership dues and vote like they tell 'em to.

      The other thing that makes me giggle is that when it comes to guns, the pro gun lobby screams for federal law, but when it comes to right to life, the conservatives scream states rights. Politics (be it liberal or conservative) is all about having your cake and eating it too. I just wish I could completely turn my back on government, other people, and just not be bothered. That's my own little hypocrisy - to want some minor gun regulation and at the same time not wanting government to bother me. Bet you didn't think I'd admit to that, did ya?

      --
      Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
    101. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The difference is in dense areas, a gun doesn't mean the same as a gun in a rural or suburban area. It makes much more sense to have a pistol when you live in an area where police take 10 minutes or more to respond, and the crime density is lower. Home invasions are often thwarted with the threat of a violent defense. Contrast that to urban areas where there is a larger threat of collateral damage when firing a gun, and then the tolerance is lower for people to have them. Arguing that I paralyzed a kid with a stray bullet when defending myself loses its luster. A thug can murder anywhere, and indiscriminate, one off killings isn't what the debate is about.

    102. Re:That org is garbage by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I dunno it's not like the extremely vast majority of American counties are "red zones", and most "blue zones" are coastal shitholes for the self-proclaimed tech elite who want to abuse everyone else.

      Yes, they are such shitholes that people leave the flyover states for them in droves as rapidly as they are able.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    103. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they simply mention that the NRA is talking about buying advertisement time- but that is clearly meant as a threat.

      And imagine the flipside. They say nothing about it, Everytown decides they don't need to buy that time, then the NRA message goes up. Then instead of a story about Snapchat extorting them, we'd have a story about Snapchat gleefully selling that time to the NRA without a peep.

      I know it's a lot for basement dwellers to grasp, but as someone who has spent some time in the business world, this sounds to me like their account rep was just trying to give them a heads-up to help, and it gotten taken the wrong way.

    104. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They kill each other because they're willing to do so. We need to change that.

      LOL. Yeah, get the bipedal apes to stop wanting to kill each other. Are you completely unfamiliar with human history and nature?

    105. Re:That org is garbage by allo · · Score: 1

      You're trolling, right?
      Right?

      The problem is, there are people, who actually think like this.

    106. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're both wrong.

      According to the Supreme Court of the US, the police have no duty to stop a crime, protect your life or property, or put themselves in harm's way in the least. Their responsibility ends at writing up a police report after a crime, and it'd be nice if they could bring the criminal into custody to stand trial.

      Is that what people think the police are or should do? Generally not. But that's what the Supremes decided. Preventing crime and disorder is officially not in their job descriptions.

    107. Re: That org is garbage by Calydor · · Score: 1

      Your well substantiated and exceedingly accurately sourced rebuttal has caused me to conclude that you must be totally right.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    108. Re: That org is garbage by DaTrueDave · · Score: 1

      The definition of 'brandishing' varies from state to state in the USA.

      In Texas (the last state I noticed being mentioned), the closest thing to 'brandishing' is Disorderly Conduct: Sec. 42.01 DISORDERLY CONDUCT. (a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly:
      (8) displays a firearm or other deadly weapon in a public place in a manner calculated to alarm;
      http://www.statutes.legis.stat...

      So, you could be charged with that crime even if you were brandishing your firearm in a legitimate defensive situation, and, unlike some of the other disorderly conduct charges, there's no defense to prosecution carved out to protect those who took this action because of a fear of bodily injury.

      .

      It seems we could all benefit from being slower to shoot our mouths off.

    109. Re:That org is garbage by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      It can. A wet car can certainly conduct electricity. and a direct lightning strike would fairly certainly destroy various parts of a modern car's electrical system, even if no significant amount of it went through the passenger. _Controlling_ a moving car that was just hit by lightning would seem to be quite difficult, especially after the noise and flash of a direct strike. _That_ would be when the seat belt would prove invaluable.

    110. Re:That org is garbage by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Reasonable to people that know nothing about statistics maybe.

    111. Re:That org is garbage by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      "Responsibility"? Care to elaborate?

    112. Re:That org is garbage by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Please allow me to differ. I've known numerous attempted suicides, genuine cries for help. This included acquaintances with bipolar depression at the worst of their cycles, and their death would have caused far greater tragedy for their friends and family. And I do know of one former acquaintance, during a divorce struggle, who ended his life with a firearm. Not having a firearm would not have necessarily saved him. But it made a moment of bleakest despondency even more dangerous for him.

    113. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, the problem is that Chicago is a corrupt cesspool from the Mayor's office down to police and nearly every city agency and department. Drugs, prostitution, etc etc are big business in Chicago. Where there's money changing hands in Chicago, there's a 'system' in place for those with power to control & profit. Chicago's history of corruption, crime, and violence is long and storied.

    114. Re:That org is garbage by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because dividing it by state doesn't tell you who is consuming those social services. You're falling for a classic statistical fallacy called Simpson's paradox. When you divide a sample into groups, the trend within each of those groups can contradict the overall trend. The best recent example was the 2016 Presidential election. Clinton won more popular votes than Trump. But because the votes are grouped by state, Trump ended up winning the election.

      Dividing it by "red state" and "blue state" unfairly transfers the tax contributions of red voters in blue states into the "blue state" category, and the social service consumption of blue voters in red states into the "red state" category. Red voters on average have higher incomes than blue voters. And since we use a progressive tax system, higher income people pay more taxes. Hence for the country overall red voters are net tax contributors, blue voters are net social service recipients.

      If you don't believe this is possible, here's a simple example. Imagine a country with two states. Blue State has 2 blue voters and 1 red voter. The red voter pays $100 in taxes, the 2 blue voters receive $40 in services each. Red State as 2 red voters and 1 blue voter. The red voters each pay $10 in taxes, the 1 blue voter receives $40 in services. So in this simplified example, every red voter is a tax contributor, every blue voter is a social services recipient. Yet the blue state is the net tax contributor and the red state is the net social services recipient. That is how little tax contributions by state are correlated to tax contributions by political affiliation.

      Grouping it by states just takes advantage of an unrelated factor to create Simpson's Paradox, Rural states tend to vote red, urban states tend to vote blue. But rural states tend to consume more government money simply because it costs more to deliver the same government services to the same number of people, if those people are spread out over a wider area.

    115. Re: That org is garbage by chrylis · · Score: 1

      Sec. 9.04. THREATS AS JUSTIFIABLE FORCE. The threat of force is justified when the use of force is justified by this chapter. For purposes of this section, a threat to cause death or serious bodily injury by the production of a weapon or otherwise, as long as the actor's purpose is limited to creating an apprehension that he will use deadly force if necessary, does not constitute the use of deadly force.

      tl;dr: It's lawful if you're in a "legitimate defensive situation".

    116. Re:That org is garbage by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      School massacres happen here because our government wants them to. Don't believe me? Facts are facts.

      1) Require parents to send their kids to school
      2) Mandate that no armed protection of any kind is provided or allowed at these schools
      3) Broadcast to everyone that this is the case (Gun free zone! We will never protect these children and teachers!)
      4) When a mentally ill person eventually does show up in this target rich environment where there are no antibodies to armed insanity...
      5) Government officials immediately talk about gun control.

      Face it. Your children are hostages of our government, purposely held in peril of death in order to scare and torment you.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    117. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Got news for you, the police will arrive just in time to draw the chalk outline around your body regardless of where you live. You need to be prepared to defend your, and your loved ones lives, not count on others to do it for you.

    118. Re: That org is garbage by dougdonovan · · Score: 1

      snapchat, get your shit together and do the ad, it does not matter what the issue is, good and bad marketing keeps you in business.

    119. Re:That org is garbage by Bartles · · Score: 1

      How much of California's pension system is unfunded?

    120. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For all the times that fearless murderers ambush armed victims regardless of the mortal risks to themselves and kill "Chicago style," you have a point. As for the other 99.9999999999999999999999999....% of the time...

      FTFY.

    121. Re:That org is garbage by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Most 'accidental discharges' are suicides, insurance can payoff if the suicidal person just takes out the cleaning kit before topping themselves.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    122. Re:That org is garbage by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Did a crime happen if you saw the cop do it, but don't report it because he would beat your ass?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    123. Re: That org is garbage by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      tl;dr: It's lawful if you're in a "legitimate defensive situation".

      Do you really want to go to court to prove that?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    124. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I'm getting shot at you better believe it.

    125. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From a European perspective, the US is just a tiny step up from, say, Mogadishu when it comes to gun-related violence.

      And here in the US, Europe, especially Germany and France, are a half step up from any given Muslim shithole, because of their brainless accommodation and capitulation to a population who practice a religion diametrically opposed to western European ideals.

      You are by far worse off.

      By the way, I always hear folks talking about the US deficit; have you checked the top ten EU economies ration of GDP to deficit lately? *snicker* (*cough* Belgium cough *Italy*)...

      Vlad is going to own you all by the time this is finished.

    126. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've literally never been more wrong.

      https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/armed-citizen/

      Articles dating back to 1958.

    127. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes it does, it might not prevent my death or even just me being injured but that gun will come out and I will squeeze off rounds until I'm empty.

    128. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I tried googling but can't find any evidence of the organization grabbing anyone's guns. Can you please provide a reference? Preferably one that is reported and corroborated by multiple independent sources?

    129. Re:That org is garbage by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      You're also a dying species. Most of these, who call themselves liberals nowadays, would call you a murderous conservative nazi shitlord, probably adding something about mysogyny or racism on top of that.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    130. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      FTFY.

      From a European perspective, the US is just a tiny step up from, say, Mogadishu when it comes to gun-related violence. Over here, shootings usually make national news. That is how rare they are.

      Most of the USA has a violent crime rate indistinguishable from Canada or western Europe. It's the Hispanic and African sections of the country that resemble Mexico and Mogadishu respectively.

    131. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FTFY.

      From a European perspective, the US is just a tiny step up from, say, Mogadishu when it comes to gun-related violence. Over here, shootings usually make national news. That is how rare they are.

      True enough. On the other hand, over here terrorist bombings are pretty rare and roving rape-gangs are unheard of... but we have guns.

    132. Re: That org is garbage by mesterha · · Score: 1

      This is just anecdotal and is biased based on what makes a good news story. (Watch out for all those sharks.) While it's hard, one needs to try and get good statistics. Maybe comparing states or countries with different gun laws will give some insight. Australia is a great example since they have a fairly recent change in gun laws. Has crime gone up a lot because people can no longer scare off or kill criminals?

      --

      Chris Mesterharm
    133. Re:That org is garbage by bobbuck · · Score: 1

      I don't believe you. Say anything you want.

    134. Re:That org is garbage by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

      Ah, see, that's where the misunderstanding comes in. You're talking about the legal duties in the United States (which is unusual in the English-speaking world), which is slightly different from "their job".

      I don't know about your job, but my job involves a bit more than the bare minimum required not to get sued.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    135. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's already happening.

    136. Re:That org is garbage by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Access to firearms do not suggest any sizable increase in suicide rates. It seems that areas with some really strict gun restrictions have higher suicide rates than countries like the US. There are also some correlation to social and societal differences but even those have some mixed results.

      You knowing people who failed to do the job is probably typical but not a counter argument to the availability of guns. It would seem that it doesn't matter a whole lot and other factors are far more influential.

    137. Re: That org is garbage by DaTrueDave · · Score: 1

      That's a completely separate section of law, and it merely says that threatening to use deadly force by brandishing a weapon, is not deadly force. That does not change the fact that brandishing a weapon is a crime in Texas, nor does it change the myriad of other laws in other states and jurisdictions.

    138. Re: That org is garbage by chrylis · · Score: 1

      It's the section of the penal code that explicitly enumerates the situations in which conduct that is otherwise unlawful is justified. It is there specifically to override the "brandishing" prohibition in such cases.

    139. Re: That org is garbage by Defakto · · Score: 1

      Absolutely.

    140. Re: That org is garbage by jsrjsr · · Score: 1

      What makes you think it is "gun nuts" who are doing it? Does anyone who owns a single gun qualify as a "gun nut"? Does someone who buys a gun to use in suicide qualify as a "gun nut"?

    141. Re: That org is garbage by lonecrow · · Score: 1

      So...what is the problem with your culture that creates this situation? Could it be that the harm reduction programs in other rich successful countries are called "redistributive social evilism" but some of your extra moronic religeous self-serving politicians? Get with the program USA! Your culture ia busted. Fix it before your the failed state and we need to takee your kids into care.

    142. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As usual, accusation from the right.
      Without any actual evidence
      Gun Grabbing Tyrants
      Like Hitler, who armed EVERY single "Aryan"?
      This is about extortion you know

    143. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Criminals registered to vote"
      Amazing that the FBI has never found these "Criminals", despite 4 Republican admins in my lifetime.

    144. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is telling the President Obama, after organizing communities in Chicago won't move back - not even to the suburbs of Chicago.

      It is also telling that having dedicated his efforts to improve public school education in Chicago he's staying in Washington D.C. so his daughter can finish out her high school education at Sidwell.

      I fault him for neither decision, but since he built his career on improving both I find avoiding them now to be interesting.

    145. Re: That org is garbage by DaTrueDave · · Score: 1

      Your reading comprehension needs some work. It explicitly states that it is only NOT deadly force. Your cite makes no mention of disorderly conduct.

      Further, if you research Texas case law, I think you'll find that the law is defined even more clearly than the statute would make it seem.

    146. Re:That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > The dems are DOOMED if they can't get control of their radical communist/progressive ideas.

      Honestly, even their socialist wing is being undone by their secret commies. Honest Democrats who hope that the government can be used to help Americans and make stuff "fair" are even being fucked over by their absurdly radical underbelly. The right wingers have a super easy job, and have for years: just expose and document these loonies. Since the Democrats are staunchly refusing to punch left, never EVER attacking the commies in their midst, everyone begins understanding that they are ok with it, even if for the wrong reasons. Meanwhile, every disgusting racist dirtbag on the right that gets outed is immediately disavowed and shunned. When some bitch stands up and says she will "stand up to white people", mainstream Democrats need to KICK HER OUT. When some jackass at a protest bitches about "fucking white males", mainstream Democrats need to OPENLY MOCK this crew. That "Hail Trump" guy got shit on from Republicans. Learn the lesson blue team, shun the extremists and mean it, just like the red team has done.

    147. Re: That org is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When seconds count, the police are only minutes away...

    148. Re:That org is garbage by eric_harris_76 · · Score: 1

      Or "virtue signaling". Or something.

      Haven't been following this person. Assuming there is such a person; I've not heard of him or her.

      --
      There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
    149. Re:That org is garbage by L.+J.+Beauregard · · Score: 1

      "As much personal freedom as reasonable" -- until it's the homogheys wanting to get hitched or someone smoking weed or following the wrong religion.

      --
      Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
      Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
    150. Re:That org is garbage by thomn8r · · Score: 1

      Gangnam style, FTW

    151. Re:That org is garbage by erapert · · Score: 1

      With his freakin' Desert Eagle .50 cal rifle.

      The Desert Eagle is not a rifle.

      First, because we're NOT.

      That's an outright lie. The left is trying to take away the right to keep and bear arms.

    152. Re:That org is garbage by DEN_GUY · · Score: 1

      So here's the point, you can go from nearly zero armed to EXACTLY zero chances of survival. I believe everyone has the right to prepare their personal defense in whatever way they see fit.

    153. Re:That org is garbage by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Sitting at a light, the car in front of me was struck by lightning. After the light turned green, the car pulled away.

      Cars are pretty effective faraday cages, it would be quite difficult for a lightning strike to do anything other than scorch the paint.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    154. Re:That org is garbage by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      The Farady cage effect is real. The difficulty I'd be concerned is relatively low impedance paths through electrically sensitive equipment, especially equipment that may be grounded. The steel and aluminum components of a car body, for example, are quite conductive. But many modern cars have extensive plastic or fiberglass components in the body itself: cars are not as

      There's a fairly good analysis of the effects and the risks at https://weather.com/storms/tor.... The guideliines mentioned there include "park safely" and "keep your hands away from metal parts of your car".

  2. Everytown everywhere by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    has its own protection racket. so does snapchat

  3. And this is interesting because? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if we aren't haters and don't hate the NRA? What if we don't have a phobia of guns? Why is this "stuff that matters"?

    Companies that sell ads sell ads. BFD.

    1. Re:And this is interesting because? by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

      What if we aren't haters and don't hate the NRA? What if we don't have a phobia of guns? Why is this "stuff that matters"?

      I don't have a "gun phobia", I own 3 - a rifle, a shotgun (which I use for hunting), and a handgun (which I use for fun -- i.e. target practice).

      But I do think guns are way too easy to obtain (both legally and illegally), and gun owners should hold more responsibility for securing their weapons so they aren't stolen and resold on the black market. My gun safe cost as much as both of the long guns that are locked inside it.

      Companies that sell ads sell ads. BFD.

      It's not the ad sale that's the story, it's the extortion.

    2. Re:And this is interesting because? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Buy ads or we'll sell the ad time to your competitors" is called "extortion" now?

      Who else has the right to be free from this "extortion"? Does the Trump campaign have that right? Or are there different rules for counter-revolutionaries?

    3. Re:And this is interesting because? by jcr · · Score: 0

      I don't think you know what "extortion" means.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    4. Re:And this is interesting because? by iNaya · · Score: 2
      Hmmm.

      Extortion is "the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats".

      Snapchat was threatening to display pro-gun ads during an anti-gun livestream unless the owners paid up. Sounds like the literal definition of extortion to me.

      If you read the actual article, you'll find that the person who did that was also being vindictive.

      --
      The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
    5. Re:And this is interesting because? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously it was extortion. It was textbook extortion, literally matched the definition 100%.

      I think you are confusing it with criminal extortion. Just because you make a "threat" to get money, doesn't mean it has to be a crime. Douchey business move lacking morality, maybe, but not always a crime. But just like free speech, that doesn't mean the Snapchat employee can't be judged for it.

    6. Re:And this is interesting because? by Bartles · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. Snapchat was telling everytown that it would sell advertisements as usual, unless everytown purchased the ad space. The submitter and the journalist are playing fast and loose with the phrasing of the facts.

    7. Re:And this is interesting because? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly, it is not even the extortion, it is the fact that they would even offer to block the NRA and the millions of people that they represent from buying ad space on their videos. It is a pretty clear cut case of pay to play discrimination. The gun grabbing nuts have a right to put their content out, and the NRA should be free to purchase ad space that is listed for sale, period.

    8. Re:And this is interesting because? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So suddenly the employee of Snapchat who was doing the extorting, rather it was vindictive or not, is suddenly not a representative of Snapchat?

      Are all the stories about Uber having a sexist environment meaningless because, after all, it's only the individuals that are exhibiting that behavior?

    9. Re:And this is interesting because? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Nope. From TFA:

      "I just learned our News Team is doing a Live Story on National Gun Violence Awareness Day," Saliterman's message began. "I would urgently like to speak with you about advertising opportunities within the story, as there will be three ad slots. We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story."

      A Snapchat employee used the threat of selling ad space to the NRA to try to get them to buy those slots. It's a standard tactic, might be a lie. The NRA angle is a bit of a distraction, it's really just a story about how Snapchat has shitty salesman who will use immoral, underhand tactics to get business.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:And this is interesting because? by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Is your handgun locked inside? Because that's the one criminals would actually want.

    11. Re:And this is interesting because? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Is your handgun locked inside? Because that's the one criminals would actually want.

      I knew someone would question that when I compared the cost of the safe to the cost of the long guns -- yes, the handgun is locked inside the same safe as the long guns. And further, when I drive it to the shooting range, it's locked in a lockbox that's bolted to the trunk of my car.

    12. Re:And this is interesting because? by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      If you knew then why didn't you say? Are you just that desperate for human interaction? :P

    13. Re:And this is interesting because? by larryv · · Score: 1

      Guns are easy to obtain because they are easy to make. I know: I've built a few. That's the long and short of it. A fully automatic long gun is about as difficult to build as a mountain bike. A single shot muzzle loader is about as difficult to make as carpenter's vise. You can easily build one in an evening of unhurried fiddling. If a thing is easy to make and people want it people will either make it themselves, or get it from somebody else who makes it, and offers it up for sale. As simple as that.

    14. Re:And this is interesting because? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      If you knew then why didn't you say? Are you just that desperate for human interaction? :P

      Because that was such a minor detail in my post and seemed to trivial to include the clarification.

    15. Re:And this is interesting because? by jcr · · Score: 1

      Repeating a bullshit claim doesn't make it true, Mr. Goebbels.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  4. i have no problem by arbiter1 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I have no problem promoting gun safety but what i do have a problem with is stupid law's that are just these feel good laws usually by liberals that claim to work to attack gun violence problem but reality do NOTHING to stop the problem. After sandy hook shooting they tried to pass laws to increase back ground check's(which there are already are checks) but it was one those feel good liberal that's that make them look good and pushed on emotion but when you look at the law would never stopped what happen from happening again. Want to see what stupid gun legislation gets you, well you get Chicago. People that are law abiding citizens have to bend over backwards to buy a gun but everyone else that don't give 2 craps about the law gets them in 5min.

    1. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      After Sandy Hook & Isla Vista, it should have become easier to keep guns out of the hands of disturbed individuals, even if Sandy Hook may not have been stopped by such legislation. Instead it's become easier which is, frankly, as insane as anyone being able to go on a shooting spree with legally obtained firearms because one of the voices in his head told him so.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    2. Re:i have no problem by rossz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or look at California. If you put a flash suppressor on your gun, it's now an assault weapon because it is 10 times more deadly.

      --
      -- Will program for bandwidth
    3. Re:i have no problem by JustNiz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OR the stupidity of the law that says you can carry a gun for protection in your car, but you have to lock the ammo in the trunk and the gun in the glovebox.

    4. Re:i have no problem by hey! · · Score: 1

      Well, part of the "problem" here is that your chance of being murdered by firearm is already very low; you're about 3x as likely to die in a car accident in any given year as to be shot to death.

      This doesn't mean that these are not problems; it's a matter of knowing where to get the next marginal increment of safety. If there were some new widget you could bolt on to cars (e.g., like a seatbelt) you could do a straightforward cost benefit analysis. But gun violence is both rarer than automobile deaths, and more complex because auto deaths are accidents and murders are intentional. If you take away one way of dying in a car people won't go and find another way of doing it.

      Something like Sandy Hook is particularly tough, because it wasn't the failure of anything we have direct control over. It was an irresponsible gun owner who didn't restrict her disturbed son from access to her firearms. You can't outlaw carelessness. But that shouldn't stop us from seeing events like Sandy Hook as a problem, or at very least a catastrophe.

      Yet some people can't even bring themselves to go that far. And paranoid denial is a problem, because if you want to make progress on a problem, you need to have data, which we aren't allowed got collect.

      If you don't want simplistic solutions to problems, you need evidence. There's no substitute.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:i have no problem by misexistentialist · · Score: 1, Insightful

      how about locking up the disturbed individuals? oh, forgot "equality" means that the insane must be treated as if they are sane and the sane treated as if they are insane, foreign migrants like citizens and citizens like disenfranchised foreigners, etc.

    6. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem in Chicago is too many guns. The police need to go door to door to collect all of those things.

    7. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no problem promoting gun safety but what i do have a problem with is stupid law's that are just these feel good laws usually by liberals that claim to work to attack gun violence problem but reality do NOTHING to stop the problem. After sandy hook shooting they tried to pass laws to increase back ground check's(which there are already are checks) but it was one those feel good liberal that's that make them look good and pushed on emotion but when you look at the law would never stopped what happen from happening again. Want to see what stupid gun legislation gets you, well you get Chicago. People that are law abiding citizens have to bend over backwards to buy a gun but everyone else that don't give 2 craps about the law gets them in 5min.

      You know that Chicago isn't even in the top 10 in the USA for gun violence? The number one is New Orleans, number 2 is Detroit, both allow open carry:

      https://www.thetrace.org/2016/10/chicago-gun-violence-per-capita-rate/

    8. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no problem promoting gun safety but what i do have a problem with is stupid law's that are just these feel good laws usually by liberals that claim to work to attack gun violence problem but reality do NOTHING to stop the problem.

      And what I have a problem with is the screaming demagogues who wring their hands about "stupid feel good laws" and bemoaning liberals, without realizing that half the time it's somebody else who wrote the law on behalf of the gun lobby just to fuck it up. But heck, if they had any suggestions, it'd be worth hearing them.

      You don't though, do you?

      After sandy hook shooting they tried to pass laws to increase back ground check's(which there are already are checks) but it was one those feel good liberal that's that make them look good and pushed on emotion but when you look at the law would never stopped what happen from happening again.

      A) You didn't identify what you found flawed with the law. So all we have is your assertion that it would do nothing.
      B) Even if your contention is correct, you didn't explicitly identify why only stopping incidents exactly like the Sandy Hook massacre was relevant.
      C) You didn't suggest an alternative anyway.

      Want to see what stupid gun legislation gets you, well you get Chicago. People that are law abiding citizens have to bend over backwards to buy a gun but everyone else that don't give 2 craps about the law gets them in 5min.

      That's not as good an argument as you think. Especially since the Supreme Court already nixed that anyway. But the fact is, people don't want it to be easy to get an gun illegally either, but you won't do anything about that.

      Why aren't you offering anything but more berating of liberals and empty complaints? Do you not realize that while it may make you feel good, and pushes well on your emotions, it doesn't do anything productive?

      That's probably the worst sin. You don't see the log in your own eyes.

       

    9. Re:i have no problem by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative
      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    10. Re:i have no problem by Cyberax · · Score: 0

      Chicago is surrounded by states where guns can be bought without any real background checks. Legally. On the other hand, New York and its surroundings passed tough gun laws and as a result the gun crime actually went down a lot.

    11. Re:i have no problem by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      The problem with locking up insane individuals is that psychologists can't tell if someone is insane or not. They're really bad at that, surprisingly.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    12. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think 5150's who change states of residence and their names should own firearms without restriction. You're a moron in defense of the 2nd amendment, which is important but also limited by the Constitution itself also.

      I blame liberals also, like Thomas Jefferson.

    13. Re:i have no problem by Bartles · · Score: 2

      One thing that is consistent is that all those cities have been run by Democrats for decades.

    14. Re:i have no problem by Bartles · · Score: 1

      Why is it called a Federal Background check, and isn't the ATF a federal agency? Maybe we could get there if we had sanctuary cities for firearms purchases. Sounds like a good idea. What other federal laws could we circumvent with sanctuary cities? How about tax law?

    15. Re:i have no problem by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      Background checks are not performed at gun fairs or for private sales. And ATF is an underfunded agency stuck (by law!) with obsolete technologies (paper files), with a chief moonlighting as another agency's official. Yeah.

      So that's why background checks without actual regulation with teeth are... ineffective.

    16. Re:i have no problem by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have no problem promoting gun safety but what i do have a problem with is stupid law's that are just these feel good laws usually by liberals that claim to work to attack gun violence problem but reality do NOTHING to stop the problem.

      Reduced accessibility to guns will ultimately result in fewer attacks being carried out using guns. How many attacks are there with high-grade explosives? Not many because they are tightly regulated.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    17. Re:i have no problem by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      The reason is that once such laws are passed, it becomes very easy to expand that whitelist...rapidly expand it. The fact that schools are being targeted by their own students might suggest they are part of the problem. Of course, that will never be explored because it scrutinizes the state-run school system.

    18. Re:i have no problem by Bartles · · Score: 1

      Obviously you've never been to a gun "fair". ATF doesn't have the constitutional power to regulate private sales.

    19. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you want to bring up the Dickey Amendment, at least be thorough and understand why it was passed in the first place. The CDC is not neutral on the issue of gun control, and many don't feel comfortable using taxpayer money to fund research driven by a social policy agenda.
      'Evidence' often involves more than cherry-picked items that support your worldview.

    20. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Background checks are not performed at gun fairs or for private sales

      Gun 'fairs', or gun shows, are events where gun shops rent tables and sell their wares. As federally licensed gun dealers (FFLs), they most certainly do perform background checks - it's against federal law for them not to. What happens in the parking lot is considered a private sale, where your assertion is correct - background checks are not required. However, it is still against federal law to sell to a prohibited person, regardless of location. There is no loophole to avoid this.
      Drop this gun show loophole nonsense - it makes you seem either ignorant of the law, intentionally deceitful, or both.

    21. Re:i have no problem by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      So that's why all the background checks are pretty much empty talk until these two loopholes are fixed.

    22. Re: i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, simple solution. Legalize marijuana. Just like that, the street price of most drugs would plummet. Dealing drugs would not be a profitable job any longer. Gun crime by gang bangers defending turf, as well as follow on revenge killings, would subside. People would prefer marijuana and probably do less of the harder drugs.

    23. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ATF doesn't have the statutory power to regulate private sales. It is something Congress could fix but they have been loathe to do it. This has led some states to step in and force private sales though dealers, which requires the same background check and waiting period.

    24. Re:i have no problem by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I think that humans are just inherently a little crazy. They have to be, or else they would just freeze up or throw themselves off the nearest bridge when confronted with reality.

    25. Re: i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well said,this thread is full the usual gun nut lame excuses.
      Let's face it, if you took
      The guns away from the mentally ill you would have to disarm entire flyover bit.
      I pity used to pity Americans dying in mass shootings now I see it see it as good thing, thins the herd of brainless turds,and raises the worlds average IQ

    26. Re:i have no problem by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      OK, then how about a law that holds the family criminally liable if they suspected that the person was mentally ill but did not report it and the person goes on to commit a murder. If the mentally ill person gets access to a family members firearm, that family member would be charged with whatever crimes the mental patient commits, since they were the responsible party.

      Once a patient is reported, you have psychologists evaluate the person, and if the psychologists find that the patient is mentally ill, they have a review with a judge to decide with a patient advocate and the patient and their family... Oh wait, we kind of had that before until the ACLU fucked it all up in the 1970s...

      Another fun tidbit, the Obama administration presided over 162 mass shootings (defined by the FBI as 4 or more victims in one incident). This is more than 8X the mass shootings of all 4 prior presidents who had between 10-23 per 8 years, and virtually every one he and his party came out pounding the drumbeat of gun confiscation...

      Another fun fact: The federal government allowed Dylan Roof to purchase his legal gun, despite his criminal record and narcotics arrest that should have prevented it...

      I am not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, but it will be informative to see if the same trend continues under Trump or if things revert back to the ~20 mass shootings every 8 years trend...

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    27. Re:i have no problem by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      OR the stupidity of the law that says you can carry a gun for protection in your car, but you have to lock the ammo in the trunk and the gun in the glovebox.

      No, that law effectively says you can't carry a gun for protection in your car, you can only transport it. It is a clear violation of the second amendment, but then, any laws which prohibit carry are that, and California is therefore one of many states which wipe their arses with the constitution in a variety of ways.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    28. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or look at California. If you put a flash suppressor on your gun, it's now an assault weapon because it is 10 times more deadly.

      Reducto ad absurdum. The gun isn't more deadly because of the flash suppressor. Adding a flash suppressor is useful only to people who want to kill and get away without being caught. This has an obvious legit military use, but no legitimate purposes for civilians. That's why it's classified an assault weapon, because only the military has a legitimate reason to use it.

    29. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But that still requires us to be able to correctly identify if a person is mentally ill. Any false positive would result in an innocent being put on indefinite lockdown. Quite problematic. It makes sense for ACLU to oppose it because you can never be sure you got the right person.

      It would be much better for the government to provide free psychiatric care.

    30. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One thing that is consistent is that all those cities have been run by Democrats for decades.

      One that that is consistent is that cities are not sovereign, independent entities, able to make any and all decisions for themselves, but are instead subject to state and federal authority. They can't act alone, and they don't even have the power to take some actions, and even when they do take actions, sometimes (as we learned recently in North Carolina), those actions are nullified.

      That's right, Reagan's decisions in the White House matter, as do the decisions in the Capitols, and the Capitals.

      Do try to be less irrational in your thinking.

    31. Re:i have no problem by hey! · · Score: 1

      It doesn't matter. You still need data.

      Look, science doesn't work because scientists are impartial. It's the adversarial process of science itself that is impartial.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    32. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It hasn't become harder relative to the general population for disturbed individuals to own guns, but since the Sandy Hook false flag it certainly has become harder to own guns in certain areas (NY for example). Some areas have outlawed the most typical of weapons under the guise of limiting magazine capacity; ignoring (or intentionally crafting to) the fact that there aren't any modern guns designed to hold less than 10 rounds.

      Your comment doesn't really address the fact that there still isn't any real mental health challenge for owning a weapon (something that I'd get behind given proper implementation), but disregarding the knee-jerk changes that have in fact occurred I think it a bit dishonest.

    33. Re:i have no problem by Zak3056 · · Score: 1

      Or look at California. If you put a flash suppressor on your gun, it's now an assault weapon because it is 10 times more deadly.

      Reducto ad absurdum. The gun isn't more deadly because of the flash suppressor. Adding a flash suppressor is useful only to people who want to kill and get away without being caught. This has an obvious legit military use, but no legitimate purposes for civilians. That's why it's classified an assault weapon, because only the military has a legitimate reason to use it.

      A flash suppressor is designed to reduce the muzzle flash experienced by the shooter, not to make the muzzle flash less observable. Thus, your argument fails.

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
    34. Re:i have no problem by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      Yeah sorry I'm not that familiar with the fucked-upness that is CA laws because I live in AZ, where
      You can legally carry here (concealed or otherwise) in a car or anywhere else except a few obvious places, even without a CCW permit.

    35. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      how about locking up the disturbed individuals? oh, forgot "equality" means that the insane must be treated as if they are sane and the sane treated as if they are insane, foreign migrants like citizens and citizens like disenfranchised foreigners, etc.

      The US prison system has a huge number of inmates who would be psych patients, not prisoners, in other countries.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    36. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      "The federal government allowed Dylan Roof to purchase his legal gun"
      Wait a sec....is this some lame attempt to pin this on Obama? You do realize that the FBI director who admitted it was a failure of one of his examiners is a Republican, right? Or do you think Obama didn't spend *enough* money on surveillance and that a Republican president, house & senate will make sure to grow the government enough to keep guns out of the hands of angry white men with the NRAs full support?

      But I expect the number of mass shootings to drop now that the Muslim overlord is out of the White House, which seemed to incite a whole lot of crazy talk and er, ill-mannered behavior among the Godfearin'.
      After all, angry white liberals can't can't shoot & sip their soy lattes at the same time & would never shoot up their favorite Starbucks.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    37. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      A kneejerk reaction?
      One dead boy facedown on some unknown beach caused a huge change in the public attitude towards refugees.
      Twenty slaughtered American kids who'd never done anything worse in their lives than steal cookies or maybe kicked a puppy and what changed?
      Not a goddamn thing.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    38. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      How do you define "isturbed individual"? Who gets to decide? What constraints are there on expanding that definition arbitrarily? What prevents someone from arbitrarily labelling as many people as possible "disturbed" because they don't like the idea of gun rights?

    39. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      And if the establishment actively excludes people that disagree with a narrative, what then? A liberal government pushes deeply flawed through the CDC and then trumpets it as "proof" that they need to pass all the laws. The people get scared because guys in white coats are telling them to be scared and the laws get passed, then we lose rights with little to no benefit.

      The Dickey Amendment can stay until the Democrats stop attacking gun rights and start attacking criminals.

    40. Re:i have no problem by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      It should have been easier to post armed police at schools. It is frankly insane to advertise "Gun free zones" in which we have concentrated our most helpless, innocent, and delicate members of society into one area and mandated that they receive zero protection from violent attacks, armed or not.

      Some people are defective. When you mass produce enough of something you are bound to get errors, outliers, and misfits. Denying they exist in spite of ubiquitous evidence to the contrary and then failing to properly prepare for when they finally blow their gaskets and destroy some of the surrounding machinery is just the stupidest, most short sighted, ignorant ass fucking thing I have ever seen in my life.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    41. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      I don't have all the answers but it's not up to me to decide - I don't write laws.
      We've found ways of drawing distinctions between sober & drunk even though the line is not that clear cut.
      Just because it may not be an easy thing is no reason to keep on accepting the status quo. Other countries have done it; so can America.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    42. Re:i have no problem by hey! · · Score: 1

      It doesn't matter. We need data. Everyone has opinions. But as long as their data collection methods are open to examination, you can contest those opinions.

      Opinions without data are just bullshit.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    43. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Other countries have placed blanket restrictions on everyone.

    44. Re:i have no problem by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      OK, then how about a law that holds the family criminally liable if they suspected that the person was mentally ill but did not report it and the person goes on to commit a murder.

      That's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard of. Historically, reporting people as insane was a method of getting rid of people you didn't like.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    45. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      You're assuming people are rational actors. They aren't. As long as that data is being collected with the specific intention of stripping away rights the collection should be resisted. If the data was being collected to form a rational opinion then we could talk.

    46. Re:i have no problem by hey! · · Score: 1

      Not at all. I'm assuming a rational process with irrational actors. In other words, science.

      Data is never perfect, of course. What's more imperfect data gets attacked by people with equally imperfect motives. This is why science doesn't instantaneously converge on a stable, evidence-based view of things. It's a long road to get there, but if you never start because the actors aren't perfect and totally unbiased, you end up with something else: religion.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    47. Re:i have no problem by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      How many attacks are there with high-grade explosives? Not many because they are tightly regulated.

      More like "not many because not many people want to threaten to blow someone up if they don't hand over their wallet"....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    48. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      The problem isn't that they aren't perfect, it's that the "science" will be done with the explicit purpose of coming up with specific, politically actionable results. Anything else WILL be ignored/suppressed/discarded. The end result of such it the abrogation of rights under a false veneer of scientific legitimacy. This is not people doing legitimate science where the results will be openly discussed and dissenters will get a valid say, it's a political hatchet job using "science" as it's justification.

    49. Re:i have no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the flash suppressor didn't make the weapon more effective, aka better, then why do you want to install one so badly? You know it makes the weapon deadlier but try to bullshit your way around it. You nor I know if it makes it 10x better but you made that number up anyway. It does make it better though and that's one of the many many reasons liberals find your arguments to be complete crap.

    50. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Not every country. But even though many of the advanced countries still have gun violence, when you add it all up, including shootings by law enforcement, it's a lot less than in the USofA

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    51. Re:i have no problem by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      And historically we used leaches and bled people of bad humors... I don't recommend you base your policy opinions on ancient history. Clinical observation and judicial oversight largely eliminate revenge commitment. The US has one of the smallest populations of committed mentally ill, while we have one of the largest populations of homeless people, many of whom are mentally ill and can't care for themselves, and a few that are a danger to themselves and others. Compared to European countries we have like 80% of our mentally ill living on the streets (assuming that mental illness has a similar incidence rate between the EU and US.)

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    52. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      And the ONLY difference between our countries is access to guns of course. Except for all the other differences.

    53. Re:i have no problem by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Clinical observation and judicial oversight largely eliminate revenge commitment.

      You idiot, the post you replied to above contains evidence of how bad clinical observation actually is. LTR.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    54. Re:i have no problem by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      First off, tone it down, calling names only makes you look foolish. Secondly, you seem to be conflating clinical observation with legal finding. Legal finding requires more than just one psychiatrist testifying, it also entails an interview between the patient and the judge as well as multiple people who know the patient well. So no, the earlier post was not conclusive to the topic at hand, namely the legal disposition of severely mentally ill patients.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    55. Re:i have no problem by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      First off, tone it down, calling names only makes you look foolish

      No, of course not: failing to read makes you look foolish. Calling names makes you look like an ass.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    56. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      America is no 1 for per-capita gun ownership but there are quite a few advanced countries where the rates are high and they don't devolve into OK corral shootouts nearly as often, even adjusting for all other factors - Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Canada
      The difference is mental, cultural, personal

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    57. Re:i have no problem by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Exactly the point. We have a number of cultural issues that need to be sorted out, instead all anyone wants to talk about is stripping away rights.

    58. Re:i have no problem by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Exactly the point. We have a number of cultural issues that need to be sorted out, instead all anyone wants to talk about is stripping away rights.

      There's a longstanding American tradition of "stripping away rights": that's one cultural issue that may never change

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    59. Re:i have no problem by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      I made no conclusions, just observations. However, if I were a president who wanted to push my anti-gun agenda and felt that the ends justified the means, one of the things I would do would be to move personnel away from the DROSS screening system and try my best to only leave republicans and make sure that they were consistently shorthanded. That way, I could virtually guarantee that at least a few criminals and crazies would be able to legally buy a gun. When they inevitably shoot up a school or church, I can then go on TV (as Obama did) and lobby hard for gun confiscation.

      DROS is a background check, not surveillance per se. It just reviews what the government already knows about you.

      But I expect the number of mass shootings to drop now that the Muslim overlord is out of the White House, which seemed to incite a whole lot of crazy talk and er, ill-mannered behavior among the Godfearin'.
      After all, angry white liberals can't can't shoot & sip their soy lattes at the same time & would never shoot up their favorite Starbucks.

      If the mass shootings drop way down under Trump, I would hope there is a congressional investigation, because usually where there is smoke there is fire. It is a hard fact that the numbers shot way up under Obama, the only question that remains is why.

      Please feel free to point to any examples of:
      - Conservatives rioting and burning cars and destroying property.
      - Any examples of conservatives assaulting liberals trying to attend a speech or shouting down and assaulting the speaker.
      - Examples of conservatives going easy on convicted felons and letting them back out on the streets where 80% plus re-offend within 5 years.
      - Examples of conservatives litigating for the release of mentally ill patients who then go on to commit the majority of mass shootings in the US.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  5. Terms of Service? by Chrontius · · Score: 1

    Honestly? I'm curious whether they violated any of their own terms by deliberately soliciting bids to bump the NRA from their ad slot.

  6. Raise a glass to the old days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Realizing that another department within Snapchat had undercut him, he fired off an email suggesting that Everytown pay up, lest National Rifle Association (NRA) adverts appear on their videos.

    Ahhh, to go back to the good old days when extortion was a crime.

  7. Gun control? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gun control is hitting what you're aiming at.

  8. facts vs sterotype by JustNiz · · Score: 0, Troll

    The truth is that even the majority of NRA members back more background checks on all gun purchases.

    http://www.politifact.com/wisc...

    1. Re:facts vs sterotype by GeorgeAaronHeath · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There is a flaw in the above statement. The NRA keeps it's member lists secret therefore one can not reliably poll the majority of the NRA members other than the NRA. The polls used to support this claim are usually biased towards getting results that support gun control measures and interestingly enough recent political polls have proven that polling on a political issue can generate false results (the recent presidential election being one example). The poll cited by this article used a sample of one hundred sixty nine NRA members out of over four million members the NRA had in 2013. Consider the sample of 169 from 4,000,000 represents less than .005% of the NRA membership and the four million number is under-representing the NRA's membership claim.

    2. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem I have with background checks, is they are supposed to check for certain qualifications that are spelled out in the law, but rather than an impartial database, every query goes straight to the FBI. The FBI shouldn't have a record of everyone who ever wanted to buy a gun. That's not right.

      I also think it's fucked up that anyone who's been to prison for more than a year is denied, regardless of whether they've ever used a gun in a crime. For their whole life. It's unamerican.

    3. Re:facts vs sterotype by dbIII · · Score: 0

      The truth is that even the majority of NRA members back more background checks on all gun purchases.

      http://www.politifact.com/wisc...

      Yes but their leaders don't really give a shit about what the members think. If you were an NRA member would you like to be represented by a guy that sold guns to an Islamic terrorist group less than a year after they had killed over a hundred US Marines? Don't like it? Tough. Oliver North is not moving for anyone. He's also the guy that pushed for suspected terrorists on the no-fly list to be allowed to buy guns. If they had honest votes from members choosing their leadership he wouldn't have been chosen.

    4. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, so like unions, except you have the choice to join the NRA or not join.

    5. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. You missed the point. There are enough background checks already executed by the NICS. I've already suffered enough "more". The problem here is the lack of prosecution for those that were denied by this check. Do your research. I've not purchased a gun in 20 years that didn't require a snack break and a fee to run my background.

      Again.. the issue is local/state/federal investigation and prosecution for those that failed the check. For those that committed a gun crime... there is little if any retribution for beyond that... there are those citizens that are for whatever reason don't mind purchasing a gun for somebody that otherwise shouldn't have one (proxy purchase). Beyond that illegal gun sales person-to-person or at pawn shops is always an issue.

      The poster child of all of this insanity is Chicago... where Dolt-In-Charge Immanuel will blame gravity, dark matter and world+dog for the massacres of people in his jurisdiction. They have would could be characterized as the most restrictive gun control laws in the country yet they suffer the highest gun-related homicide rate both per-capita and just in general.

      https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/24225-gun-background-check-denials-not-prosecuted-appeals-not-processed

    6. Re: facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But not this one apparently.

      While the press corps was distracted and the cable channels aired footage of Trump surrounded by a bipartisan group of smiling women, behind closed doors and with no fanfare the president quietly signed a measure that killed a regulation enacted by the Obama administration to tighten gun background checks.

      The rule required the Social Security Administration to send over the names of people who receive government checks for being mentally disabled and others who have been deemed unable to handle their own financial affairs to the FBI office that runs the national background check database. This is a universe of about 75,000 people.

      The Daily 202: What Trump didnâ(TM)t want you to see him signing

    7. Re:facts vs sterotype by Bartles · · Score: 1

      Background checks should not be required for people who already own a gun purchased with a background check, nor should there be a waiting period.

    8. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Over 80% of Americans in general support background checks. If that doesn't include a majority of NRA members, then they're such a small portion of the population that they should just be ignored when policies are being written.

    9. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, because life conditions don't change over time.

      Just because at 1 point in time someone met the conditions to allow the purchase of a gun, does NOT mean between that time and the future, they still meet those conditions.

      In most cases yes. But background checks are not there to prevent the majority of law abiding people from obtaining guns.

    10. Re:facts vs sterotype by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      By that logic you should be able to confiscate their gun at some point in the future, but you can't, unless they are a convicted felon. So your argument is not valid.

      At a minimum, it should be offered as an option, like a frequent flier card or drivers license or hunting license to get a certified background check to buy guns for like 3 or 5 years, so one does not have to pay $60 or more each time a gun is purchased... They could pull the license if you are convicted of a crime or become a mental patient. The fact is that the progressives want it expensive because they hate guns, and they know that the high cost of guns keeps certain people, especially low income people, from owning one.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    11. Re:facts vs sterotype by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 2

      First off, any honest, informed person will tell you that politifact is full of shit and a shill for the liberal progressives. They spin and twist and build straw man arguments rather than doing what they purport to do, namely, fact check things.

      Secondly, the right to bear arms is a constitutional right. Flying commercial is not. You can't infringe a constitutional right without a felony conviction or a finding of mental incompetence. Period full stop. The no fly list does not have a jury of your peers to put you on it, or really much in the way of judicial review. If you don't like the second amendment, get the votes to change the constitution, until then you are out of luck.

      Thirdly, we already have federal background checks for every gun purchase. If the feds do their jobs, all is well. If they are incompetent and don't do their jobs in a reasonable time frame, bad things can happen. Welcome to the real world.

      Fourth, the liberal progressives in general and the ACLU in particular are responsible for nearly every mass murder attack in the US after they broke the system for involuntary commitment for the mentally ill in the 1970s (look it up). It doesn't matter if they use a knife, a gun or a car to follow the voices in their head and murder people, we can't have mentally ill people roaming free in a free society, or there will be mass killings. The solution is not to take away everyone's freedom to use knives, machetes, axes, pipes, guns or drive cars, the solution is to take the paranoid schizophrenics and put them in the looney bin like it used to be...

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    12. Re:facts vs sterotype by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > I also think it's fucked up that anyone who's been to prison for more than a year is denied, regardless of whether they've ever used a gun in a crime. For their whole life. It's unamerican.

      I agree with your point but not because its unamerican, but because it just enocurages cirminals to get them illegally.
      I've always thought it was stupid the way that in the US, once you have a criminal record you basically remain marked for life. Its pretty much encouraging people to be lifetime criminals once they have a record, since its often much harder for them to get a job.

      I prefer the UK approach that is once you've done your punishment its considered that you've paid your debt to society and you get a fresh start and your record wiped. I'm not sure of the details but I think employers aren't legally allowed to discriminate against ex-cons and often can't even tell if they ever had a criminal conviction. Obviously there are a few exceptions, such as, (I guess) allowing convicted paedos to work with kids, and probably multiple offenders, but it generally allows people to resume as functioning members of society so less of a chance of repeat offending.

    13. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Anti-Gunners keep their lists secret too. HOWEVER,
      ONLY the rational pro gun crowd believes in and follows the Constitution,
      and has a genuin care about your right to privacy.
      The Anti crowd doesn't give a fuck about the Constitution, or your privacy,
      they want to dig around in, meddle with, and force themselves all over you.
      No wonder people are beginning to seriously dislike the anti gun crowd
      and are debunking their silly anti gun position more and more now.
      They're insidious feature creeping control freaks.

    14. Re:facts vs sterotype by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 0

      The liberal progressive shills at Politifact are wrong again, what a shocker. You can only bend truth so far before it becomes horse shit. Politifact has been shoveling it industrial scale for many years now and at this point the name it'self is an oxymoron, along with anyone who things they are getting straight information from politifact.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    15. Re:facts vs sterotype by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1, Troll

      We already have federal background checks, and every lib who says guns are too easy to get should be forced to go through the process of getting one (you don't have to actually buy one, just go through the process). Your ignorance is apparent to the rest of us who have. Liberals are just conservatives who haven't experienced enough of the real world yet. If you haven't gone through the process of buying a gun or you think that someone can just "buy a gun" at a gun show without a background check, you have been lied to and are demonstrably ignorant of reality. Every gun purchase has to go through an FFL dealer and process with a background check. Period... Go to your nearest gun show or even online and try to buy a gun. Every one will go through an FFL dealer and you will go through a background check.

      As far as illegal, stolen guns; as a gun owner, I am 100% for having the death penalty option for firing a gun in the commission of any violent crime. How is that for being tough on gun crime? But liberals don't want to punish criminals do they... It's almost pathological, blame the inanimate gun, not the conscious, thinking criminal who is choosing moment by moment to break the law and harm innocents around him...

      Further we need to take every person who is mentally ill and a danger to themselves and those around them and have them permanently committed so that they can get the meds that they need every day and the rest of us can live in safety with all of our freedoms intact.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    16. Re:facts vs sterotype by dunkelfalke · · Score: 0

      The hypocrisy is strong with this one. Raving about "full of shit liberal progressives" using "alt-right" as an emotional laden insult without even realising that you are using "liberal progressives" as the same kind of an insult. Screaming about left wing and right wing how they were supposed to be originally, but in fact stating that left wing were all the kinds of people you don't like and right wing are the kind you worship, which is certainly not how it used to be: communists, socialists, nazis, libertarians and anarchists did not exist at the time of national constituent assembly in 1789. The ideologies were founded in the 19th and the 20th centuries (1789 is the 18th century, in the very probable case you don't know that). The left side wanted a change from a monarchy to a republic (hence progressives), the right side were monarchists who wanted to keep things as they were (hence conservatives) and the centre which wanted both sides to get along (moderate constitutional monarchy). Last but not least, you want to forcefully imprison mentally ill people so they won't roam free in a free society (which is an oxymoron on its own) but you aren't institutionalised despite clearly suffering from a psychosis.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    17. Re:facts vs sterotype by ProzacPatient · · Score: 1

      The worst is when, in the case of some people I've known, NICS decides to deny even someone with a clean background but make it as difficult as possible to appeal if you even can at all.

    18. Re:facts vs sterotype by dbIII · · Score: 1

      right to bear arms is a constitutional right

      Only if you are male, under 45, and have the courage to join the National Guard. Try actually reading the thing some time instead of the Ollie North Hezbolla version.

      How about we get back to the NRA instead of spouting their propaganda designed to make a poorly regulated rifle club look like something George Washington said we should all join.

    19. Re:facts vs sterotype by ProzacPatient · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, maybe somewhat related to your point, the director for the 80's film Red Dawn was highly vocal against the Brady bill when it was moving through Congress and he included a scene in the movie where a Soviet officer told his troops to go to every gun store in town and collect all the ATF 4473 forms for the purposes of tracking down all gun owners in the area of occupation thereby nipping opposition in the bud.

    20. Re:facts vs sterotype by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      I'm a "gun nut" and I support, in principle, a number of new gun laws. However I'm also aware that those laws would be bastardized by the Democrats and thus wouldn't support them.

    21. Re:facts vs sterotype by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Which is why it says "the people" have a right, of course. Because that makes sense.

    22. Re:facts vs sterotype by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      I'm with you. I think the trouble with allowing any common-sense laws in is that the democrats would just see them as the thin end of the wedge.

    23. Re:facts vs sterotype by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Yep. For instance I think mandatory training and licensing is completely reasonable since a TON of people don't get taught by their parents anymore. Yet the Democrats would use that as a bludgeon to strip gun rights away from people en masse, and thus I wouldn't be able to support such a scheme in practice.

    24. Re: facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      80% of Americans could be convinced and polled to ban dihydrogen monoxide because they're a bunch of ignoramuses; it doesn't mean that following through with that would be productive, healthy, or worthy of consideration.

    25. Re: facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I also think it's fucked up that anyone who's been to prison for more than a year is denied, regardless of whether they've ever used a gun in a crime. For their whole life. It's unamerican.

      You don't even have to go to prison, at all, to fall into this trap. So much as plea for probation to a crime where you might have been sent to prison for one year, and you'll never pass a NICS check. The number of nonviolent crimes where this could apply is staggering.

    26. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that the law, both historically and as shown by the Supreme Court, shows that the militia is only one example of a use of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The right itself is an individual right, held by all people (yes, including the women you want to deny self-protection rights), whether they are participating in the organized militia, the unorganized militia, or no military at all.

      In other words, you fail to understand the words used in the Second Amendment, the sentence structure, the history of the Amendment, or the history of case law. Other than that, however, you were correct in identifying that the Constitution mentioned was the one for the United States. Everything else, you got wrong.

    27. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've never actually read the Constitution. The intent was that every able bodies male (with exceptions for Quakers) was by default part of the militia.

    28. Re:facts vs sterotype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh come on guy. You're acting like getting a gun check is as hard as getting a refugee visa. It took me all of 5 minutes tops to get mine. I said, give me that gun, he said gimme your drivers license, then dialed up a phone number, punched some buttons and then hung up. Maybe 2 mins on the phone. I was in the show and out the door as I said in 5 mins. This was at the monthly gun show in Antioch TN, if that matters.

    29. Re:facts vs sterotype by dbIII · · Score: 1

      shows that the militia is only one example of a use of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

      Exactly. It's a right that has nothing to do with the 2nd amendment no matter what the NRA are spouting by pretending to be a "militia" themselves. You don't have to hand your guns back in at 45 because it's not the second amendment that says you can have them in the first place.

    30. Re:facts vs sterotype by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Only if you are male, under 45, and have the courage to join the National Guard. Try actually reading the thing some time instead of the Ollie North Hezbolla version.

      I have my pocket constitution right here. It does require that you have a brain capable of rational thought when you read it though. The federal government and the general citizenry as well as the supreme court for 230 plus years disagree with your liberal progressive assertion on the nature of the 2nd amendment, care to try again?

      http://tenthamendmentcenter.co...

      As soon as your lawyer club (ACLU) teachers club (NEA) vagina club (NOW) et. al. get regulated, you can bitch about the NRA not being regulated. Until then you are way off base. George Washington and the founders wanted all the gun owners to form organized militia such that anytime there were any threats to the constitution, foreign or domestic, we would all load our guns and saddle up and go kill the tyrants. You best be glad we have moderated from his position.

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  9. NRA should have told snapchat to fuck off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The nerve of an advertising company to take money from a paying customer and beg someone else to buy advertising so they wouldn't be "forced" (as if someone put a gun to their head to make them take money from the NRA) to show their ads at certain times. Were I the NRA (or any Snapchat customer) I would be appalled at this behavior.

    1. Re:NRA should have told snapchat to fuck off by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      This exactly, and were I the NRA, I might also review my contract to see what legal recourse I could take for bait and switch or breach of contract. At minimum a few heads should roll over at Snapchat.

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  10. Re: Best way to defend yourself by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    No, the best way to defend yourself is to not be a privacy nutcase and make sure that government and business organizations know and respect the nonviolent people's positiobs so that we also know who the people are who are having issues so that we can get them the help they need not to make their problems big problems for everyone else. But no, the suggested answer to 1984-type problems hasn't been mutual understanding and respect, but secrecy, and I am putting a stop to that being the only suggestion. Anyone with me?

  11. Gun control was never about safety by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    it was about keeping guns out of the hands of blacks. Seriously. I'm not kidding or trolling. In the late 70s early 80s manufacturing finally made guns affordable by minorities. That's also around the time gun control laws started making it through legislatures. If you ever want to seem the funniest thing in your life looks up a story about a bunch of anti-muslim rednecks who took their AR-15s to go harass worshipers at a mosque unaware that the Nation of Islam are a little more than just peaceful worshipers.

    My point is we don't have really effective gun control law because we never really tried to. Now, I don't think we ever will and I honestly wish the left would drop the issue entirely. It's a losing issue (and noticing that was the only thing Clinton got right). But it does irritate me to see folks like you saying gun control doesn't work. No shit Sherlock that a bunch of laws designed to keep guns out of oppressed minorities didn't have much effect on gun violence...

    --
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    1. Re:Gun control was never about safety by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gun control targeting free blacks predates the late 70's by a long shot; like pre-civil war, increasing in southern states post war. It ramped up again in the 1960's, spurred in part by Kennedy's assassination, resulting in the 1968 Gun Control Act, which sought to ban import of inexpensive "Saturday night specials" favored by the lower economic classes--but also banned any number of small, high quality and expensive pistols.

    2. Re:Gun control was never about safety by nyet · · Score: 2
    3. Re:Gun control was never about safety by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 2

      The stated purpose of gun control laws today is to reduce homicide. (The actual purpose is to take power away from the citizens and give the guns and the power to the state). The facts indicate that strict gun laws or confiscation dramatically increase crime rates. Homicide (all homicide, not just looking at gun homicide) jumps up dramatically when guns are banned (the UK saw an increase in homicides and a 100% increase in violent crime after they banned guns). This is also borne out in Australia after their gun ban and other countries. Gun homicide drops, because they are not as readily available, but if you are a citizen, you don't really care if you get murdered by a gun or a machete, either way you are having a really shitty day that you probably could have prevented with a concealed carry weapon (which happens dozens of times per day by the way).

      http://crimeresearch.org/2013/...

      Now look at the liberal progressive paradise of Chicago with 4367 shootings last year and one of the strictest gun bans in the country. The simple concept that liberals intentionally to fail to grasp is that CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY THE LAW. If they are going to murder someone, they are going to chose the best tool that is available, and the laws be damned...

      http://crime.chicagotribune.co...

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    4. Re:Gun control was never about safety by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      John Lott? C'mon, you seriously buy any of that guy's nonsense?

    5. Re:Gun control was never about safety by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      100% of all statistics are bullshit made up to prove a point.

      >> The simple concept that liberals intentionally to fail to grasp is that CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY THE LAW.
      >> If they are going to murder someone, they are going to chose the best tool that is available, and the laws be damned...

      The simple concept that conservatives intentionally to fail to grasp is that the easy availability guns factor into the equation.
      Do we really need 300 million guns for a country with 300 million people?

      There is a simple compromise that would end a lot of these needless deaths. Unfortunately the word is more evil that the c word I used in the previous sentence, it begins with A. and you can count a bility.

      If guns were registered to their owners such as cars are registered to their owners, and the owners are held accountable for any misuse caused by their position, much like if your 12 year old son 'borrows' the family car and drives it into a neighbors house.

      Guns are devices used to kill, they really have little purpose beyond killing. If someone leaves their gun out and junior accidentally discharges it into a friend or himself, the owner of said gun should be put in jail and held accountable as if he pulled the trigger himself.

      But the last thing gun owners seem to want is any sort of accountability.

  12. WearOrange day? by PPH · · Score: 1

    With Snapchat lenses?

    I can see how this could really go wrong.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  13. Article & its source fail to ask key questions by Onuma · · Score: 2

    The NRA is a deeply controversial and polarizing gun advocacy group. While some argue that it exists to vigorously defend the Second Amendment, others argue that the NRA has stifled any meaningful attempt at reasonable gun control reform.

    Can't both arguments have merit, simultaneously?
    What is the metric for whether a proposed gun control measure is "reasonable"? That is a highly subjective term.

    Furthermore, what is the standard rate for this type of advertisement? Is $150k USD the going rate for 3x 10-second ads for an event of this nature, or is the price here being inflated simply due the diametric natures of Everytown and the NRA?

    I do like how Mic (who originally received the emails regarding this story) fails to address these questions entirely. Mic is garbage, as is TheNextWeb for running a [basically paraphrased, rehashed] story without asking pertinent questions.

    --
    What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
  14. Re: Best way to defend yourself by lucm · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Next time a nutcase breaks into your house and rapes your wife and children, make sure to let him know that you're not violent, that should solve the problem.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  15. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Do you have any idea how paranoid that is? Around here that might happen a couple times a decade across the entire county. You're much, much better off just buying a security system and reinforced doors than you are bringing a gun into the house for that sort of thing.

    Bottom line here is that accidental discharges and suicides are a much more common occurrence than the specific crime you're referencing.

    Some of us are just not the kind of horrible people that you 2nd amendment people are.

  16. Way to attack a strawman by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    In no way was I saying that a gun isn't a way to protect yourself and have little issue with people owning whatever weaponry they care for. I was outlining what I believe is the best defense which if implemented, the scenario you describe would be virtually impossible.

    1. Re:Way to attack a strawman by lucm · · Score: 0

      Yes. And also we should dismantle the army and rely on the UN to solve the world's problems, because we know that deep down, diplomacy and trust is how countries like South Korea, Ukraine or Taiwan can be better protected against the ambitions of their neighbors.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:Way to attack a strawman by dunkelfalke · · Score: 0

      You do realise that the situation in the Ukraine escalated in first place because of firearm use? And then continued to escalate by people like you?

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    3. Re:Way to attack a strawman by msauve · · Score: 1

      Perhaps background checks should be required before armies can buy weapons. Close the international arms trade loophole!

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    4. Re: Way to attack a strawman by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      This is actually how Germany is supposed to trade arms. But the situation escalated before any army got involved, in shootings between riot police and nationalists, and later when armed nationalists stormed government buildings despite a peaceful solution that was agreed upon by all sides - these people insisted on violence and still do, hence the continuing civil war despite, once again, a peaceful solution agreement. If the current government tries to implement their part of the agreement, the nationalists will rebel once again. And since their president owns some defence contractor business, he actively profits from a war.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  17. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who cares, the troll army has to upvote only alt-right edgelord comments!

    Boy slashdot commenters sure have changed radically to the right in the past 9 months or so. Hmm I wonder why

  18. Classy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Classy guy, that Rob Saliterman. Maybe he could join Trump's team.

  19. Further clarification by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    No. I make it abundantly clear that I am willing to make a principled and nuanced use of violence. The Doctor from Doctor Who uses people as weapons so deftly that he has an ironic reputation for nonviolence. He is actually the most violent person in the Doctor Who universe such that his enemies have given up trying to kill him resorting to a tactic of forcing him into a stasis chamber in a manner similar to that of Star Trek's Data's strategy in the game Strategema. I want people to answer when asked the question as to whether messing with me is a good idea, "What universe have you been living in? Don't you know who he is? Do you realize how crazy you sound just now?" Others read the Bible and strive to be good people. I read the Bible, read Jesus' words that say "Why do you call me good? Only God is good." and strive to understand the full import of that statement, and have come to the conclusion that such striving is folly. I am me and that is all I need to be. Any striving to be any other is folly. I do not cuss. My not cussing comes out of heritage, not from some striving to be good or to not offend. You had better believe that I have plenty of other options available to make people very uncomfortable at displeasing me.

    1. Re:Further clarification by lucm · · Score: 1

      I am willing to make a principled and nuanced use of violence.

      Great. What is your principled and nuanced approach to dealing with people from Al-Qaeda who will behead you if they get a chance unless you accept to live according to their interpretation of Islam? Or how do you propose to deal with those Mexican drug cartels who intercept buses in rural areas and force male passengers to fight each other to death while the female passengers are being raped and tortured?

      See, you remind me of that movie, Demolition Man, where a future, peace-loving society has no way to defend themselves against a psychopath because their policing system, which relies on citations and verbal commands, doesn't work when the bad guy has a gun and no intention of surrendering.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:Further clarification by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      Only because you seem to be unable to envision using all your assets. I've said that I wouldn't mind open borders if we built a wall around the Middle East. I believe in incarceration with treatment of the incarcerated being more similar to that of a mental ward than a prison.

  20. Re: Best way to defend yourself by SirSlud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The thing that makes this so stupid is that you haven't made contingencies for the thousands of other terrible things that are far more likely to happen to you, your wife, and your children. This is what makes the "I'm prepared game" so fucking hollow.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  21. Attention idiots of Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gee, are you guys stupid or what? The posting is not about pro/anti gun shit. The posting is about buying some time on Snapchat to further your cause and told that you better pay additional money or else Snapchat would run advertising during your timeslot that was specifically against your precious cause. That reeks of extortion to me. Sounds downright Uberish (tm).

  22. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You're counting suicide toward the total gun death figures that you hope to prevent. To me, that does not make sense. It seems that you lack respect for the people who would kill themselves. Who are we to tell them they do not have that right?

  23. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    The most immoral act it seems was to sell ad space to the NRA, who represent about half of the households in the US (45 million households own firearms) and then turn around and try to stifle their voice by offering to kill the ads for a fee. I am pretty certain that this would have been illegal if it were radio or broadcast TV airtime because of the rules around selling ad space.

    If the position of Everytown is well reasoned and sourced, it seems that the NRA adds should be welcome, seeing as the NRA is essentially paying to put Everytown online (that is how ads work, they pay for the cost of distributing the content)...

    However, if the NRA ads are well reasoned and effective, it seems like not only a disservice to the audience, but to our democracy by silencing 1 side of the debate. The days of the liberal media are numbered. They are revealed as fascist radicals at every turn. They don't foster debate and open dialog, they shout down or shut out the other perspectives because "only their perspective can possibly be right." While at the same time they at best have a high school level education regarding anything in the hard or applied sciences.

    The same thing is true of academia, where professors lie to their ignorant students who are nothing but adult children and rile them up to go shout down the opposition, rather than listening and debating and becoming better informed on the controversy, and the general population is sick of all the little morally "superior" brown shirts shouting down any opposition.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  24. Monetization is the new evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean, there is a reason Google retired its corporate slogan "don't be evil". Making people pay for stuff they don't want is how intertube gangs operate in the world of organized advertising.

  25. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Alt-right is the latest pejorative of the weak minded liberal progressives who have become progressively shrill over the last 6 months as their paper thin arguments have been shredded in the truth filters of millions of Americans. 50 years ago they redrew the political spectrum because they were left wing nutjobs arguing against conservative centrists, and it was hard to get people to take them seriously arguing against the center from the far left.

    The original political spectrum looked like this:
    - Left Wing were for totalitarian government control: Fascists, socialists, communists, Nazis all fit in this category to various degrees

    - Centrists were for limited government: conservatives typically fit this category (they want to continue the status quo existing limited government)

    - Right Wing were for minimal or no government: Libertarians and Anarchists fit in this category to different degrees

    Now, as the American population is seeing that the emperor has no clothes, the left wing progressive nutjobs have tried to further marginalize the centrist conservatives, because far right wasn't pejorative enough, so they have moved on to alt-right as the new insult for those with better, more reasonable positions and arguments that rely on facts instead of feelings.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  26. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    The US uses a precedent-based court system. It's a pretty good system in most aspects, but one drawback is that it tends to polarise political issues because of a fear of incrimentalism. The NRA is obliged to oppose any form of gun control, no matter how reasonable, because once courts say that much gun control is allowable it becomes a great deal easier to then pass stricter gun control, and even stricter after that. The same thing goes on regarding abortion: Even pro-choice activists rarely support full abortion on demand under all circumstances, but they know that if ever they give even a little ground on that issue and the Supreme court says that restricting abortion is ok, the more conservative states will immediately run with it to the opposite extreme.

    It's one of several reasons that US political cultures is so often dominated by the extremes, and compromise poses such difficulty.

  27. Re: Best way to defend yourself by BronsCon · · Score: 2

    More to the point, if a suicidal person doesn't have a gun, they can always electrocute themselves, drown themselves, poison themselves, drive their car off an overpass (and into freeway traffic, killing innocent people in the process), blow themselves up (likely killing innocent people in the process), rob a bank and taunt police into shooting them, jump off a bridge or building, slit their wrists (down, not across, so the damage can't be repaired), or come up with much more creative ways of killing themselves. Guns aren't even the most popular method, and for good reason; you stand a better chance of becoming brain damaged than dying from a self inflicted shot to the head.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  28. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by rossz · · Score: 1

    the NRA has stifled any meaningful attempt at reasonable gun control reform.

    The anti-gun crowd keeps changing the definition of "reasonable gun control". At one time the NRA backed extensive gun control laws and those laws passed. Then the anti-gun people moved the goal post. They keep moving the goal post. So the NRA finally said "enough is enough".

    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
  29. Name 10 by lucm · · Score: 1

    I'm curious. Could you name 10 of those "thousands of terrible things" that are more likely to happen to my wife and children, and that should be addressed before doing something as complex as buying a gun?

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  30. Re: Best way to defend yourself by lucm · · Score: 1

    rob a bank and taunt police into shooting them

    I think if I was to consider suicide that's the one solution I'd pick because maybe, if the robbery is a success, I would give up on the second part of the plan and escape to Mexico or some other place where I could spend the rest of my life living like a king. Or at the very least, go to Vegas and have one hell of a nice weekend.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  31. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by swb · · Score: 2

    The Supreme Court is also part of the problem. The stability of the court is both a benefit and a curse. It's a curse because once appointed, justices serve for life which means the court is glacially slow to turn over. In most cases, the only way to change a Supreme Court ruling is to either pass a constitutional amendment or appoint new justices with predictable ideological biases who then overrule past rulings.

    Since amending the constitution is practically impossible, partisans have realized that by loading the court with ideological allies they can achieve lasting legislative goals through Supreme Court rulings.

    Thus the legislative and democratic process has been bypassed in favor of what becomes a nearly ecclesiastical body. Americans have on many issues traded legislation by elected representatives for legislation by life-appointed jurists whose rulings are nearly completely permanent.

    I think the simplest solution is to acknowledge the political nature of the court and overhaul the tenure of the court, requiring justices to retire after 10 years of service. This would cause the court to more closely align with the general political will of the country. This would mean court rulings would be more likely to align with the legislative process politically and ideologically, which, hopefully, would push issue resolution from the court system to the legislative system.

    The most contentious issues benefit from legislative solutions where compromise can more easily be achieved. Judicial decisions tend to be more absolute, which in turn makes them inherently more partisan in nature. If dispute resolution is pushed back into the legislative arena, we might end up with a more compromise-focused set of policies which would also be less partisan.

    There might be other solutions, too, such as allowing a supermajority of Congress 30-90 days to vacate Supreme Court decisions. Failure to affirmatively vacate them would allow them to stand as usual. This would prevent the court from issuing rulings which run counter to the general political will, while still setting the bar very high for overturning them.

    Another option might be to make the Vice President the 9th member of the court, allowing an elected official to act as the tiebreaker for issues partisan within the court. This allows political influence on contentious court decisions, while still allowing the court to issue majority rulings for which the 9th vote would have no influence.

  32. Their mistake by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Everytown for Gun Safety's first mistake: Snapchat.

  33. Re: Best way to defend yourself by buss_error · · Score: 1

    Next time a nutcase breaks into your house
    If that's a common problem for you, perhaps you live in a different country, because that isn't a common problem in the US.
    Of all murders/rapes during a home invasion for 2014 (the last year on which records are available) there were 128. Out of a population of over 380,000,000.
    Now, think of the number of gun suicides or family violence. Much larger number than 128.

    If you like guns, I don't have a problem with that. Most liberals do not have a problem with guns per se, despite what you are incessantly told. In fact, I like and own several. Liberals think "Yes, you may have a pistol, a rifle or a shotgun. No, I think the use of a mortar, tank, anti-aircraft gun in a residential neighborhood is some what questionable, and likely shouldn't be allowed." Yes, there are some loony tunes liberals. They are -not- the majority. What? Your party doesn't have loony toons supporters? I think they do.

    And before you start on the 2nd amendment, I will remind you that at the time, smooth bore muzzle loader flintlocks were the prevalent weapon. Not fully automatic machine pistols with 120 round drum magazines that are accurate up to 100 yards or more. (But I'd SO like to fire one off just once.)

    --
    Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
  34. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What does that say about you being the sort of person who'd rather let people off themselves than go to the trouble of helping them find a reason to go on living?

    "Respect", my ass.

  35. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    There's another consequence of the stability of surpreme court decisions too: It leads to a lot of indirect laws, where legislators try to find creative ways to achieve indirectly things that they cannot achieve directly under the constitution as interpreted by the supreme court. This often leads to some really strange and convoluted laws, including laws that are intentionally impossible to comply with.

  36. Re: Best way to defend yourself by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And before you start on the 2nd amendment, I will remind you that at the time, smooth bore muzzle loader flintlocks were the prevalent weapon. Not fully automatic machine pistols with 120 round drum magazines that are accurate up to 100 yards or more. (But I'd SO like to fire one off just once.)

    This is a shit argument because it is disingenuous, and you are being a hypocritical asshole because you know it is disingenuous. First, the breech-loading rifle existed at the time. They didn't ban it, even though it was essentially the assault rifle of its day. Second, it was the practice for private citizens to own cannon. The entire point of the second amendment was to avoid the need for a standing militia. That meant that all the military weapons were meant to be in the hands of the people, and specifically as a hedge against tyranny. The authors and proponents of the 2a also believed in the right to self defense (a basic tenet of common law) and made that point very clear in their writings on the subject.

    TL;DR: the second amendment was specifically intended to keep military weapons in the hands of civilians.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  37. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously though, it's not about acting when the nutcase breaks in, it's about making the society such that the nutcases are exceptionally rare and these that happen get proper medical treatment before they turn violent.

    You're arguing against flood prevention embankments (and pro every house having a dinghy in the attic) on basis "they won't help you when the water is up to your roof".

  38. The real question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... (NRA) adverts appear on their videos.

    That is blackmail, the police should be involved. But the real question isn't about committing blackmail: The real question is, did the NRA have to pay money to avoid gun safety adverts in their communiques? If no, then SnapChat took sides and violated any 'safe harbour' law they were depending on.

  39. Can't have it both ways by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Either they start taking political positions, or money talks. Gun ownership is legal. So this isn't about a corporation making money off of illegal activity. If you think it's immoral, then you can't expect them to pay for your moral judgements. Otherwise, you should expect them to take a moral stand of their choosing on any issue you may disagree with.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  40. Re: Best way to defend yourself by ronmon · · Score: 1

    Mis-clicked mod. Undo that.

  41. statistics are hard by doug141 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One doesn't need to "poll the majority" to be able to make statistically sound assertions about a group. Do you think 50% of manufactured hard drives are run to failure to determine MTBF?

    claim: "a majority of people are right handed"
    naïve rebuttal:" WHOA there... we gotta individually count 4 billion righties before you can make that claim!"

    1. Re:statistics are hard by GeorgeAaronHeath · · Score: 1

      You are correct in stating that you do not need to poll a majority of people in order to make a statistically sound assertion, however you do need to poll a reasonable sample size and use questions that are neutrally biased to accurately make a statistically sound assertion. Can polling a sample of two people allow one to make a statistically sound assertion for a population of forty thousand? In my above post I left out two zeros between the decimal and the five just to prove a point that many people will accept or reject statistics and numbers without actually checking them out personally. That sample group actually represents less than 0.00004225% of the population that makes up the NRA membership. This sample size if far from reasonable and is another trick used by firms to generate biased poll results. Selectively timing the poll so that it follows a major attack where the media is claiming the shooter got his guns without a background check will bias the poll towards background checks. Choosing a sample population mostly from Los Angeles, NYC, and Chicago will further bias the poll. Asking "Do you support background checks on all firearms sales to prevent terrorists from acquiring machine guns" will bias the poll results more than "Do you support background checks on all firearms transfers including a father gifting a family heirloom to his son?" The Sample size is too small relative to the population it is intended to represent in order to reflect an sound assertion. Without knowing where and when the members of the sample group where polled and the exact questions used we can not accurately assume anything about the poll.

    2. Re:statistics are hard by moeinvt · · Score: 1

      "One doesn't need to "poll the majority" to be able to make statistically sound assertions about a group. "

      True, but it's necessary to have a sufficiently large sample size of people in that group.

      The poll in question was an online poll, there were 2703 respondents, including 169 supposed NRA members.

      Given that there are 5 million NRA members (roughly 1.5% of the population) and the NRA keeps its membership lists private, how did they manage to find 169 NRA members in a poll of 2703 people? Luck? Even if these 169 people really are NRA members, what confidence level can you have with 169 out of 5 million?

      Furthermore, the poll questions were totally slanted to give the desired result. Explain to an NRA member that when you say "background checks" what you really mean is "criminalizing any private sales that don't go through a licensed firearms dealer" you'd be lucky if 1% supported it.

    3. Re:statistics are hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .005% though does seem a bit lacking. Your strawman has been noted and convinced nobody.

    4. Re:statistics are hard by doug141 · · Score: 1

      "what confidence level can you have with 169 out of 5 million?

      The 169 sample size in this case, with 74% of respondents making choice A over choice B, gives a 99.9% confidence interval that if you polled the ENTIRE population, between 63% to 85% of respondents (a majority) would make choice A.

    5. Re:statistics are hard by mesterha · · Score: 1

      That sample group actually represents less than 0.00004225% of the population that makes up the NRA membership.

      It's actually quite interesting how multiplicative and additive arguments are easy to mix up. You're essentially making a multiplicative argument that a percentage is relevant, but in this case it's the additive argument that matters. I don't care about the size of the population, all I care is that I have a big enough sample size to detect what I care about. For example, it might be a sample of 100 people, but I don't care if I've got a population of a thousand people or a trillion people.

      On the other issues you are correct. How you formulate the questions and how you sample the population can have a huge effect on the results.

      --

      Chris Mesterharm
  42. Genocide and Bigotry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Be honest, it's not just the colonized part, it's the genocide during the civil war that continues today, and the socially acceptable bigotry. The Appalachian people are a minority, but not a protected one. It's completely legal, and a good re-election strategy, for big city liberals to demonstrate their bigotry when voting for things that continue to suppress rural, and particularly southern economies.

    1. Re:Genocide and Bigotry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh good grief. Those are the same folks that vote against measures to increase prosperity in the cities that are the source of their largess.

      If they like nice things, then perhaps they should get off their asses and earn them. I mean, isn't that what they're always telling us cityslickers that can't afford to make it on the minimum wage jobs that remain after the decent paying jobs leave?

  43. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If this is your argument, you already lost in the 1930s and 40s when the national guard was established.

  44. Re: Best way to defend yourself by msauve · · Score: 2

    "at the time, smooth bore muzzle loader flintlocks were the prevalent weapon."

    On both sides, so armed citizens were on an equitable basis with government troops. Private ownership of the big weapons of the day, heavy cannon, wasn't uncommon (privateers).

    Now you're arguing that although the weapons available to the government have improved, those available to citizens shouldn't.

    Of course, also at the time, there were no electronic communications, no high speed printing presses, no photography, etc. So by your logic, a reasonable interpretation of the 1st Amendment would allow modern government to limit speech to unamplified human speech, handwriting, and the output of Gutenberg presses.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  45. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by moeinvt · · Score: 1

    "What is the metric for whether a proposed gun control measure is 'reasonable'? "

    The NRA is willing to accept the following gun control measures, so apparently this is what they consider "reasonable".

    - National Firearms Act of 1934
    - Federal Firearms Act of 1968
    - National Instant Checks System(NICS)
    - State level permitting procedures

    Anti-gun groups like "Everytown" & "The Brady Campaign" will never give you a precise definition because they consider ALL anti-gun laws "reasonable". They will never stop unless they achieve complete civilian disarmament. They know that they can't achieve this in one fell swoop, so they pursue an incremental strategy claiming that each little step is "reasonable".

  46. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Kohath · · Score: 1

    2nd amendment ... muzzle loader flintlocks

    If that's the standard, then "freedom of the press" only covers operators of hand-cranked printing presses. Obviously, that's not the standard.

  47. Re: Best way to defend yourself by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    If this is your argument, you already lost in the 1930s and 40s when the national guard was established.

    That was a major setback, but it's no reason to give up.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  48. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If a suicidal person doesn't have a gun, then they probably won't kill themselves. If they do try anyways, they use a method that's less likely to be fatal.

    You're whole argument is based upon bad logic. We already know from when coal stoves were displaced by safer stoves that the suicide rates went down as a significant portion of the people who had been putting their head in an oven had to take additional steps in order to kill themselves. Guns are no different. Guns are very fast and very effective and if you do it right, there's no suffering for the person killing themselves.

    And no, you don't stand a better chance of brain damage than death if you shoot yourself in the head. Only fucking morons survive shooting themselves in the head. It means they missed. If you're going to shoot yourself in the head, you always put the gun in your mouth. That is 100% fatal. Those morons that put the gut to the side or top of their heads have a slight possibility of surviving with serious brain damage.

    As for those other methods, yes, they do exist, but it isn't an efficient substitution. The more work a person has to do to kill themselves, the more likely it is that they'll pass through that moment and not go through with it. It's why there are suicide phones on one of our bridges here. People actually use the phones rather than jump. Some people do still jump, but it's a smaller number than would otherwise jump.

  49. You've already lost the power guns give by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    you lost that power when modern militaries became so large, powerful and well trained/supplied. You can't stand up to a modern military. You just can't and you're kidding yourself if you think you can. You won't be able to get enough of the kind of high power guns meant for killing men that a military has (fun fact: the M-16 was designed from the ground up to kill people. It's range, power, etc is optimized for it).

    I suppose you could hope the military sides with the people, but I've yet to see that happen and not end in a Junta. Your only real hope is to maintain real democracy. The way you do that is by leaving nobody behind. Don't let there be disenfranchised and abused people. Even if they deserve it (e.g. "lazy" folks who don't work enough for your tastes). They'll be turned against you eventually, like they have for always.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:You've already lost the power guns give by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

      Fun fact: The M-16 is dramatically less powerful than the gun it replaced in US service. It's also dramatically less powerful than a typical hunting rifle.

    2. Re:You've already lost the power guns give by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't stand up to a modern military.

      We don't have to.

      We (people who firmly believe in the 2A and the rest of the BoR and willing to walk the walk) *are* the military (at least, the vast majority) in the all-volunteer US military. The US military upper-echelons are not given enough credit. The vast majority are good people with integrity who would never obey orders like enforcing domestic gun confiscation, etc. The US military is not a 'button' that can be pressed nor are they unquestioning minions.

      Any US leaders who would issue such orders to the military should be more worried that the guns may get pointed at them, instead.

    3. Re:You've already lost the power guns give by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The AR-15 is the exact same rifle as the M-16 (without the wasteful and ineffective full-auto). Fun fact: there are more AR-15s in private hands in the US than there are M-16s in military hands.

      Also, in terms of range, power, etc, it's much less effective at killing people than grampa's hunting rifle and the military rifle that it replaced. It was designed from the ground up to allow soldiers to carry more rounds of (less powerful) ammunition and to lower the recoil felt by the shooter (by making the cartridge less powerful).

      You know so very little about all of this, but you are so ready to spout off about it...

    4. Re:You've already lost the power guns give by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      So yah, feel free to read the other replies to your post, who pretty effectively take apart your assertions:

      Fun fact: The M-16 is dramatically less powerful than the gun it replaced in US service. It's also dramatically less powerful than a typical hunting rifle.

      .223 (5.56) used by the M-16 and AR15 vs the typical hunting round (30-06)
      https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6wz...

      We don't have to fight the military.

      We (people who firmly believe in the 2A and the rest of the BoR and willing to walk the walk) *are* the military (at least, the vast majority) in the all-volunteer US military. The US military upper-echelons are not given enough credit. The vast majority are good people with integrity who would never obey orders like enforcing domestic gun confiscation, etc. The US military is not a 'button' that can be pressed nor are they unquestioning minions.

      Any US leaders who would issue such orders to the military should be more worried that the guns may get pointed at them, instead.

      The AR-15 is the exact same rifle as the M-16 (without the wasteful and ineffective full-auto). Fun fact: there are more AR-15s in private hands in the US than there are M-16s in military hands.

      Also, in terms of range, power, etc, it's much less effective at killing people than grampa's hunting rifle and the military rifle that it replaced. It was designed from the ground up to allow soldiers to carry more rounds of (less powerful) ammunition and to lower the recoil felt by the shooter (by making the cartridge less powerful).

      You know so very little about all of this, but you are so ready to spout off about it...

      The only thing I would add is that there are about 50 million gun owners in the US with more than 300 million guns, and lets say for the sake of argument that the politicians found 1 million soldiers from the UN to follow orders to confiscate guns (because fun fact: our military takes an oath to uphold and protect the constitution and most of them would not follow such an order). They would be facing most of our volunteer military and an an armed and for the most part trained (retired military and hunters) citizenry who wouldn't fight like a conventional force. There would be no green zones, no enemy lines, and within a matter of a few weeks, every occupying soldier would be picked off or would flee.

      Don't let the peace loving nature of the majority fool you, Americans are far more deadly when cornered than the ignorant savages we fought in Afghanistan or Iraq. The fascist progressive politicians all know this, and that is why they try to confiscate the guns.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  50. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you like guns, I don't have a problem with that. Most liberals do not have a problem with guns per se, despite what you are incessantly told.

    I'm a liberal who likes guns, too; that is bullshit. Most liberals' experience with guns is within the context of fiction and the news (but I repeat myself, hyuk hyuk)

    And before you start on the 2nd amendment, I will remind you that at the time, smooth bore muzzle loader flintlocks were the prevalent weapon. Not fully automatic machine pistols with 120 round drum magazines that are accurate up to 100 yards or more. (But I'd SO like to fire one off just once.)

    Did you really not see how this argument could be flipped on the first amendment?

  51. The US Does Guns Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The US is a sad joke compared to the rest of the developed world. Gun deaths of all kinds are a multiple of what they are in Canada, Australia, western Europe, and Japan. Americans are not more "free" in any useful sense of the word than people who live in those countries. Apart from being more "free" to get shot, of course.

  52. Re: Best way to defend yourself by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

    Second, it was the practice for private citizens to own cannon.

    And the ships to put them on...

    The number of guns on privateers outnumbered the fledgeling US navy's by more than ten to one. That's not only a lot of fire power in private hands, it's the majority of fire power in private hands.

    --
    Stefan Axelsson
  53. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lol its the bullshit musket thing, always a clear identifier of either the indoctrinated idiot or an intentional insurgent trying to remove our hard won freedoms.

    Hell, private citizens (literally those who refused to be subjects) owned fucking warships and crewed them. Repeal the blatantly unconstitutional NFA and all the other later tack-on bills, it was null and void the second they passed it.

  54. Re: Best way to defend yourself by buss_error · · Score: 1

    hypocritical asshole because you know it is disingenuous.

    Oh, triggered did you cupcake? Well, go back and get your comprehension back on snowflake because I did not say breach loaders didn't exist, because I most certainly know they did. What I said was muzzle loaders were more prevalent, which is true.

    Second, it was the practice for private citizens to own cannon. Citation? Because that sure sounds like a load of Grump to me. Cannon were not something the "average citizen" could afford to buy with a lifetime of earnings.

    TL;DR: the second amendment was specifically intended to keep military weapons in the hands of civilians.
    I never said it wasn't at the time. But these days a military weapon is a AIM 120 or a nuclear weapon, which is illegal as hell for you to own. And if you are jutnob enough to think you can have a stand up fight with LEO/government and win, let me remind you that is the attempt of violent overthrow of the government, which is treason, and I don't care if your beer buddies come over to help you out, the Army will have more, and bigger weapons. Yeah, being armed isn't going to help you at all in that case.

    You might try moderating your alcohol intake, because you are acting like a complete jerk.

    --
    Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
  55. Re: Best way to defend yourself by bluegutang · · Score: 1

    So... does the 2nd Amendment protect the right of private citizens to enrich uranium and build nukes?

  56. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, while smoothbore muskets were the primary arm of the regular troops, much of the private citizenry owned Kentucky long rifles, which were the most sophisticated small arms of the day (capable of much faster firing rates and unprecedented accuracy). The small arms owned by private individuals were considerably better than what was commonly used by the military.

  57. Re: Best way to defend yourself by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

    Looney tunes? Nah. Utterly misinformed and pants-shittingly terrified? Absolutely. As a liberal with liberal friends I can tell you that the amount of complete bullshit that people believe about guns is extremely vast. Liberals aren't quite as bad as what most pro-gunners think, but they're pretty close, because even if they don't constantly demand shitty laws, they tend to approve of them when they come up. The end result is the same.

    Also as others have stated the "But flintlocks!!!" argument is both stupid and extremely dangerous. Hope you don't mind the 4th Amendment not applying to your computer.

  58. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

    At the time, the states were concerned that a federal standing army might take away their state sovereignty. This actually occurred during the US Civil War, when the southern states attempted to secede from the union and were overwhelmed by military forces. Some of the uses of military power against US civilians have been more clearly unconstitutional, such as the imprisonment of Japanese American in concentration camps during WW II: that internment should actually be mentioned more as people review President Trump's policies on immigration.

    However, at the time the Constitution was written, private citizens did not typically maintain an _armory_. Black powder was much more dangerous to store in bulk, so even quite small communities maintained a common reserve where gun owners would share the cost and maintenance and bulk resupply. Circulating through a bulk supply, rather than maintaining your own long-term reserve, was safer and far more cost effective. The result was that the ammunition for mass murder or military resistance was in short supply for most gun owners. Some historical review shows that even an infantryman of that era might have roughly 60 rounds:

  59. Re:Nonviolence clarification by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    By nonviolence I make an exception for provocation and don't recommend disarmament. Recreational violence where both parties agree to some form of wailing on each other, doesn't count againt the sort of non-violence I propose, either.
    Diplomacy should be used though and with North Korea we've left them up to their own devices too much. We treat them like they should have sovereignty. The UN in its current form is an absurdity. Until nations can adopt a culture of understanding their citizens, they should not be considered friendly participants in a proper world government. Rulers of such countries should be notified that if they attack the world community,retaliation will be swift and certain. Constant in your face diplomacy should be used. In some situations air dropping or otherwise smuggling foodand in some circumstances weapons to the citizens should be in order so that they are not so sympathetic to their inappropriate rulers. Something along the lines of character assassination should be done. Whatever someone who behaves without understanding of his fellow man enough should be learned about him that appropriate rewards/punishments for good/bad behavior can be devised.

  60. statistics are hard really really hard by doug141 · · Score: 1

    The 169 sample size in this case, with 74% of respondents making choice A over choice B, gives a 99.9% confidence interval that if you polled the ENTIRE population, between 63% to 85% of respondents (a majority) would make choice A.

    Your argument about insufficient sample size is invalid. Ask a trusted friend who knows stats.

  61. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by fredgiblet · · Score: 1

    For the Left literally every gun law is not only "reasonable" but essential.

    For the right only laws that primarily effect criminals are reasonable, and not all of them.

  62. Re: Best way to defend yourself by lucm · · Score: 1

    Ok so why don't you fix society and until you have a good handle on nutcases people keep their guns?

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  63. Re:Nonviolence clarification by lucm · · Score: 1

    So what you're proposing is a worldwide police state where countries and/or people who don't follow your vision are punished. Sounds like dictatorship to me, minus the positive aspects like less money spent on elections.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  64. Re: Best way to defend yourself by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    The average bank robber gets a few thousand and ten or more years. It's a true idiots crime.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  65. Re: Best way to defend yourself by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    What is the big deal? The US military has THOUSANDS of nukes. I only have three.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  66. Re: Best way to defend yourself by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Slower firing, but much greater accuracy. One thing redcoats were good at, was reloading and firing rapidly, but no generally accurately. They trained at it constantly, IIRC 3 shots/minute was their standard.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  67. Re: Best way to defend yourself by lucm · · Score: 1

    You're such a party pooper. Can't you let suicidal people dream a bit?

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  68. Re: Best way to defend yourself by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    it was the practice for private citizens to own cannon.

    Citation? Because that sure sounds like a load of Grump to me. Cannon were not something the "average citizen" could afford to buy with a lifetime of earnings.

    Let me explain to you how quotation marks work, son. You put them around things which are actually quotations, not things you imagined people said. In the meantime, google is your friend. Learn to internet.

    the second amendment was specifically intended to keep military weapons in the hands of civilians.

    I never said it wasn't at the time.

    Ha! "wasn't at the time" — guess what? That intent never changed, and it's still a good idea.

    But these days a military weapon is a AIM 120 or a nuclear weapon, which is illegal as hell for you to own.

    Nobody has any business actually using nuclear weapons, so that is a stupid argument we're all tired of hearing. And I am not happy that the baby-killing industry is sitting on so many missiles, rockets, and bombs, either.

    And if you are jutnob enough to think you can have a stand up fight with LEO/government and win,

    That was the whole point of the second amendment. To keep the arms in the hands of the citizens, so that the government couldn't have a fight with the citizenry, because the military was the citizenry.

    and I don't care if your beer buddies come over to help you out, the Army will have more, and bigger weapons. Yeah, being armed isn't going to help you at all in that case.

    This really isn't about overthrow of the government in times of peace. It's more about things like resisting being rounded up into concentration camps in time of war, if you happen to be one of the unpopular kids. Why don't you go talk to your local enlisted and ask them how they would like to go street to street and door to door in their own country hunting down people who haven't done anything wrong, who oh by the way are also going to be shooting at them, rigging up IEDs, etc.

    You might try moderating your alcohol intake, because you are acting like a complete jerk.

    You might try not being a disingenuous douchebag.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  69. Re: Best way to defend yourself by robkeeney · · Score: 1

    And before you start on the 2nd amendment, I will remind you that at the time, smooth bore muzzle loader flintlocks were the prevalent weapon

    And do you apply that same reasoning to the 1st Amendment? Are color magazines and DVDs and computers not protected under the 1st Amendment? After all, at the time all they had was quill pens and parchment and very simple manual printing presses.

    Do you see how stupid that reasoning is?

  70. Re: Best way to defend yourself by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    Sure, until the embankments are in place, the dinghies are a good idea. But goddammit, don't protest against the embankments arguing that dinghies are a better solution!

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  71. Stop by lucm · · Score: 1

    Please stop with those analogies. They don't work.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
    1. Re: Stop by Jesus+H+Rolle · · Score: 1

      But you haven't seen my solar powered trimaran yet. It can shelter two dinghies in the rain.

  72. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too bad it's completely moot, since

    A) the days when armed civilians actually stood some kind of chance against a modern army is long gone and
    B) The "tyranny" referred to would be the British royal family... hardly a relevant threat anymore.

    Just face it, gun nuts are compensating for some physical and/or mental deficiency, and that's why they go crazy when you threaten to take their guns away; you might as well threaten to cut their dicks off.

  73. whaaambulance enroute! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you need a doctor? Every bone in your body must be broken after the fucked up pretzel you twisted yourself into to make that logic work!

  74. The Founders wanted Italics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does using all those italics mean the statements are accurate and valid citations providing evidence to your claims instead of marking areas of your statements that are conjecture and opinion?

  75. Re: Best way to defend yourself by sumdumass · · Score: 1

    It's an idiot's crime unless it is your retirement plan. Wait until you are 65 or so or cannot keep a job any longer, Go on bank robbing spree, spending and enjoying yourself until you get caught, then have the state give you 3 hots and a cot for the rest of your natural life. If they release you earlier, rinse and repeat.

    Truthfully, its a more sound retirement strategy than social security and the lottery that a lot of people rely on. You will likely have a better quality of life in the process if you don't mind a girlfriend named Chad.

  76. Re: Best way to defend yourself by BronsCon · · Score: 1

    If a suicidal person doesn't have a gun, then they probably won't kill themselves.

    Assuming that nearly 100% of people who use guns to commit suicide would not do so absent the gun, then yes, just barely "probably". Like, 50.9% "probably".

    Let's take a look at the reality of the situation.

    Only 50.9% of suicides in the US make use of a gun. Are you telling me that at least 20,300 of the 20,666 people who committed suicide by gun in 2012 would not have killed themselves had they not had a gun? Do you really not think at least 366 of them would have fallen back on suffocation, poisoning, or hanging, which account for 41.4% of suicides?

    I'd say, statistically speaking, 41.4% (8,349) of them would have. That's 20.6% of all suicides in the US, which drops the incidence of suicide that would be prevented by the absence of guns to a mere 30.3%, if you also ignore the remaining forms of suicide, which make up another 7.7% of suicides in the US.

    When you consider those other methods methods, you must admit that the difference between guns suicides and non-gun suicides is only 1.8%; that hardly makes guns more effective; it just indicates that they're more typically chosen.

    That 1.8% variance represents the suicides which would likely be prevented if there were no guns. That's 730 suicidal lives which would have been saved in 2012; how many lives did guns save in that time?

    Then, there's the fact that guns exist and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. Even if we restrict gun ownership to police and military, you need to realize that police and military suicides are not uncommon. In 2012, 126 police officers and 349 soldiers committed suicide. That further reduces the number of gun suicides we can prevent from 730 to 255. That's just 0.6%.

    Furthermore, as long as guns and/or the knowledge, tools, and materials required to build them exist, even if restricted to police and military, criminals will be able to get their hands on them (theft, illegal manufacture, etc); and if a criminal can get one, so can a suicidal person, which leaves the door open to suicide by gun for any of the remaining 255 souls who are so inclined.

    If guns could disappear tomorrow, along with the knowledge required to make them, I'd be fine with that happening. I mean, I'd want the $2000+ I've spent on them back, but other than that, yes, I think we'd be better off. But, as long as they exist, I'm going to hit the range at least twice a month and make loud noises while putting holes in paper targets at a distance.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  77. Re: Best way to defend yourself by BronsCon · · Score: 1

    I cut off my 2nd to last paragraph too soon. It should continue thus:

    Statistically speaking, 50.9% of them would be so inclined; therefore, banning guns would only, in all likelihood, have prevented 125 suicides in 2012. Again, how many lives did guns save that year? We don't have those statistics, because when a criminal turns and runs away at the sight of a gun, the person who didn't have to pull the trigger doesn't typically report it.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  78. Re: Best way to defend yourself by BronsCon · · Score: 1
    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  79. Re: Best way to defend yourself by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Do you have any idea what kind of life US social security can bring you in the third world. That assumes SS will be there, I'm not so sure, but still. At this point, you'd be a fool not to seriously consider 'globalizing' your retirement (but leave your funds out of reach of local keptocrats), having been beaten with the same stick for decades.

    You have obviously had a white bread upbringing. Nobody you know has ever gone up? If they had, you would realize that prison doctors are among the worst and a prisoner's best bet is to not get sick. Because the doctors will usually make it worse. Fed might be better, but I bet it's not much better.

    Bank robbers don't go to minimum security farms ether.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  80. Re: Best way to defend yourself by jsrjsr · · Score: 1

    A) Yep. That's why asymmetric warfare is not a problem. NOT!

    B) By the time the second amendment was written, the British were no longer in control of what had been their colonies.

    Just face it, you don't really know all that much about this.

  81. Re: Best way to defend yourself by sumdumass · · Score: 1

    If only a US social security recipient lived in the third world.... Well that would be kind of pointless because if it didn't exist, the third world country would be recreated within a sub part of the US.

    As for the " white bread upbringing".. You must be delusional. Sure people have gone up but it doesn't mean everyone has. I have had more opportunities when I was younger to find work than kids today mostly due to increased regulation and child labor laws and general work ethics. Even then, I know a lot of people who didn't make out as well as I did and will be relying on the old SSI and the lottery for their retirement if they live long enough.

    Doctors aren't really an issue either. In my 40+ years of life, I have only went to a doctor for broken bones and stitches until recently when I decided to control my blood pressure and sugar. Prison doctors can handle that just fine and it will likely be more than they get now without a charge.

  82. Re: Best way to defend yourself by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Lots of US SS recipients live in the third world. They live like kings instead of on cat food.

    If you had been around half as much as you claim, somebody you know would have experienced 'prison medical care' and you would know just how out of your ass you are speaking.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  83. Re: Best way to defend yourself by sumdumass · · Score: 1

    You are comparing the king of a third world country to the meager existence of a poor person with no assets trying to get by on Social Security. It doesn't matter that you used words like King- it is still the same shit experience sometimes. We are not the third world and we become accustomed to better qualities of life. It really is that simple. Even in prison in the US, people live better quality of life than some third world people have it.

    As for Prison medical care, for the working poor in the US, it can still be better or more medical care then they currently receive. Even with Obamacare, the plans have deductibles so high that almost no one uses it to the point of benefiting them unless something major happens. They either walk it off or wait until they cannot ignore it any more just like they did before Obamacare except now they either pay for something they do not use or have their tax refunds confiscated for the privilege of being a citizen. Prison medical care is likely more than they get currently or no different than they would normally receive.

    Obamacare did little to change access to care for a lot of working people. It mostly changed access to coverage which in some cases hurt more than it helped.

  84. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by epine · · Score: 1

    The most immoral act it seems was to sell ad space to the NRA, who represent about half of the households in the US (45 million households own firearms) and then turn around and try to stifle their voice by offering to kill the ads for a fee.

    Am I to suppose the BSA represents me because I own a computer? Or that the MPAA represents me because I own a few DVDs? Or that FSF represents me because I sometimes code in emacs? Or that various eco-terrorists represent me because I think than many of their chosen targets actually are assholes?

    You seriously need to rethink that small word "represents".

  85. Re:Article & its source fail to ask key questi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Alt-right is

    actually....a self-adopted term.

    Not that it's an entirely new group, you are correct in that they are just a subset of the far right, it's just developed over time in some different manifestations, and prefers to have its own identity for various reasons.

    The original political spectrum looked like this:

    Nope!

    Left-Right Politics:

    The terms "left" and "right" appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left. One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained, "We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp." However, the Right opposed the seating arrangement because they believed that deputies should support private or general interests but should not form factions or political parties. The contemporary press occasionally used the terms "left" and "right" to refer to the opposing sides.[6]

    The terms "Right" and "Left" refer to political affiliations originating early in the French Revolutionary era of 1789–1799, and referred originally to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France. As seen from the Speaker's seat at the front of the Assembly, the aristocracy sat on the right (traditionally the seat of honor) and the commoners sat on the left, hence the terms Right-wing politics and Left-wing politics.

    Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was the Ancien Régime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic or royal interests, and the church, while "The Left" implied support for republicanism, secularism, and civil liberties.[4] Because the political franchise at the start of the revolution was relatively narrow, the original "Left" represented mainly the interests of the bourgeoisie, the rising capitalist class (with notable exceptions such as the proto-communist Gracchus Babeuf). Support for laissez-faire commerce and free markets were expressed by politicians sitting on the left, because these represented policies favorable to capitalists rather than to the aristocracy; but outside of parliamentary politics, these views are often characterized as being on the Right.

    Look, you're not going to win points by using your emotional anger to drive you to lie. Stick with actual facts, not your latest ravings from the toilet. Nobody pays attention to just another kook whining about things that aren't even remotely factual.

    Besides, if you want to talk political spectrum try to get a bit more informed. There are several variants that can be used, you don't need to falsely pretend towards accuracy that you don't possess. You can pursue a more legitimate course.

  86. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Never seen " fully automatic machine pistols with 120 round drum magazines that are accurate up to 100 yards or more ". Please cite!

  87. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Supreme Court case that banned sawed-off shotguns in the 1930's was U.S. v Miller. Miller had no advocate arguing his case, so it was pretty one-sided. The decision banning short-barreled shotguns was because the government argued they had no military purpose, despite them having been used pretty extensively in war prior to and after this. The current US Army shotgun is often issued with a barrel well under the 16-inch minimum required for civilians, as are the rifles.

    Let me rephrase this: According to US v Miller, a Supreme Court case from the 1930's, only military-style weapons are protected by the 2nd Amendment. If a weapon has no military purpose, the 2nd Amendment does not apply.

  88. Re: Best way to defend yourself by beastofburdon · · Score: 0

    I'm certain that I have encountered vegetables with a larger capacity for reasoning and logic than you.

  89. Re:Nonviolence clarification by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Excepta wider range of activities are explicitly allowed than in any currently existing state.

  90. Re:Punished by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    People who don't follow the "vision" enshrined in our laws are already punished, so there's no real difference on that particular element.

  91. Re: Best way to defend yourself by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Actually, yes.

    The original intention of the second amendment was that the citizens should own the weapons of war, that would tend to include nuclear weapons.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  92. Does the NRA represent gun owners? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Am I to suppose the BSA represents me because I own a computer? Or that the MPAA represents me because I own a few DVDs? Or that FSF represents me because I sometimes code in emacs? Or that various eco-terrorists represent me because I think than many of their chosen targets actually are assholes?

    I get what you are trying to say (though most of those organizations represent corporations who are fighting with their customers, as opposed to the gun industry who are pretty well aligned with their customers). In the case of the NRA, lets change the example to one that more closely resembles the situation with the NRA: if there were a large contingent of politicians who wanted to take away or dramatically infringe on your right to own a computer or have online access because, while admittedly useful to you, "many children are being damaged by online porn and child predators", so we need "computer and internet regulation and controls," to ensure "internet safety." (I basically just transposed for the word gun) I am pretty sure you would donate to the EFF or some other similar organization to fight for your personal freedom and rights, and most people who want to own computers/have online access would feel that the EFF or similar represented them, whether they donated to it or not, and computer ownership/internet access is not even a right spelled out in the constitution.

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    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like