Hey, as long as you stay in the right lane when driving like a granny, I'm totally fine with it. It's when people pull that crap in the middle or left lane that makes me want to Hulk out.
Specifically, keeping guns out of the hands of lunatics and felons does not, in any way, shape or form "infringe" on your right to bear arms.
Nothing that has ever been proposed would do this, because they almost never acquire their guns via legal means. Making it even more illegal doesn't do anything. Also, the only way the "lunatics and felons" would be stopped by a background check is if they have already proven themselves to be dangerous - if they have proven themselves to be a threat, then they the hell are they free to harm others instead of being locked up?
Beyond this, it is a childish fantasy to believe that the fat-slobs from the local "militia" are ever going to overthrow jack-shit.
Now you sound exactly like the British back in the late 1700's. There are around 100 million gun owners in the US and total military, police, and Federal agent forces are about 4 million. Assuming no one employed by the government switches sides, that's still being outnumbered 25 to 1. Also, your comment shows just how little you know of gun owners, with the typical gun owner being better trained than the typical police officer. Try looking up data on police accuracy and their training requirements - it's a sick joke to claim that the police in the US are "well trained" with guns.
Simply put: A direct confrontation with the U.S. military where you attempt to "restore our freedoms" would be a pathetic, one-sided massacre. Every participant would be dead in minutes, hours if they're really "lucky." The survivors would be rounded up, tried for treason, and executed.
It would be a massacre, but the other way around. You don't seem to grasp how much the US government relies on civilian contractors and how much they exaggerate the effectiveness of their fancy toys. Chris Dorner evaded thousands of officer and drone surveillance for a week - ONE MAN versus all of that, imagined what almost half of the adults in the country could do?
Your best hope for restoring lost rights is, and always will be, the ballot box.
Ah yes, because throwing pieces of paper at the government while they shoot at you is really effective/sarc. Please show me one example, just one, of a society regaining their freedom through peaceful elections without any use of force.
Show me a person who thinks he can effectively "defend" his constitutional rights with his civilian caliber semi-automatic pistol/rifle and I'll show you somebody who hasn't spent even ten minutes in the military.
Look in a mirror and I'll show you someone who has no idea how little firearms training our troops actually receive. I have several family members who served in the military and they never did any training with a pistol, only with rifles. Even recent government releases (regarding the DHS ammo purchases) show that the typical soldier in the US military only fires 350 rounds PER YEAR for training. That's just sad, seeing how the average gun owner can easily go through 1,000 rounds in a few hours at the range. Don't buy into the propaganda about our "amazingly trained" military - they're not that well trained and we mostly rely on sheer numbers to win wars.
If data on crime rates in various states is anything to go by, it seems that allowing law abiding citizens to carry a gun for protection is far more effective (and much, MUCH cheaper) than having more policemen.
This, 100%. I've been trying to explain this to a "friend" of mine who worships the police. He keeps claiming that if the police do it, it's OK. He totally ignores instance of murder, rape, assault, etc committed by the police and demands that everyone praise ALL cops as "heroes".
Slight correction, since 1991 the murder rate has dropped from 9.8 per 100,000 (it's peak) to 4.7 per 100,000 in 2011. That's pretty damn impressive. The rest of your post is spot on.
Not true. Making it so that companies cannot deny someone with a pre-existing condition, saying that older (more costly) people cannot be charged more than three times what young (less costly) people, etc raises premiums for healthy people - so yes, you are paying for their insurance through your higher premiums. I'm OK with saying that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied, but they should have to pay more as a result of costing more (I'd even be OK with saying that they can't charge more than X% of your yearly income in order to prevent people with major illnesses from going bankrupt).
If you look at the statistics, we literally have one kid per million Americans ending up getting shot (whether murdered or on accident). While I agree with the notion of teaching firearms safety in schools, the myth that we have lots of kids being shot just isn't true.
Vermont is trying to pass a law taxing anyone who doesn't own a gun. Their rationale is that people who do not own guns are more likely to call the police and thus use more taxpayer provided services, thus they should have to pay more as a result of using the services more.
Even more important than no gerrymandering is a method of punishing politicians who violate the Constitution. Simply voiding an unconstitutional law obviously does not deter them from promoting and passing unconstitutional legislation in the future. If they faced large fines and prison time (no chance for a pardon) for supporting a law found to be unconstitutional, politicians would be much less likely to ignore it and violate our rights.
Right, which is why no other Renault's have had this problem and his car never had the problem of the brake pedal being routed to the accelerator until that day. Again, if it was a mistake in the design of the car, it would have happened from day one or happened in all models of the car - not one car on one random day - a day the driver also admits to having had seizures while driving.
Ah, now I'm remembering why I haven't been on/. in a year or so. People here are so convinced that they and their fellow man are infallible that they would rather make absurd claims about machines magically changing their function than to accept that humans do stupid shit all the time and then try to blame it on inanimate objects.
Yes, and seeing how multiple times with other vehicles people claiming that it was "accelerating on its own" were later found to have been pushing the wrong pedal, what seems more likely - that the car was possessed and the brakes sped it up or that the driver wasn't thinking and kept pushing the wrong pedal? Seriously, stop and think rationally for a moment - which is more logical, the brake pedal spontaneously causing acceleration or the user pushing the wrong pedal?
If you read up on it, you'll find out that every case the car could have been stopped just fine if the drive had used their brain. Even on a 540 HP Roush Mustang, you can stop it with the throttle floored at 100 mph just by using the brakes. Then there's always putting the car into neutral, park (not ideal) or just turning it off (again, not ideal). The problem is that the drivers A) don't think because they're scared B) push the wrong pedal (if I recall right, black boxes from Toyota's a few years back showed that none of the drivers claiming runaway cars hit the brakes) or C) don't operate the car properly, such as if it has a push button ignition they just push the button quickly - which won't turn it off (safety feature to prevent you from accidentally turning the car off while driving) - you need to push and hold the button for a few seconds for it to shut the engine off while driving.
Sorry, but you really shouldn't blame companies, engineers, governments, or vehicles for user error.
So their brilliant technician couldn't even come up with the idea to hit the brakes? That makes me thankful Renault's aren't sold in the US if their techs can't even figure out how to push the brakes, put the car in neutral, or simply turn it off. Before you claim "he was going too fast for the brakes to stop him", that's not true at all. Car and Driver tested various cars for this after the claims of Toyota's accelerating on their own and showed that even modified sports cars (like a Roush Mustang) have brakes powerful enough to stop the car when the pedal is stuck to the floor. http://www.caranddriver.com/features/how-to-deal-with-unintended-acceleration
Not to mention that the brakes in all cars are more powerful than the engines. A couple of years ago after the claims that Toyota's were accelerating on their own, Car and Driver decided to take several cars out, get them up to 100 mph and then hit the brakes while keeping the throttle floored. Every car stopped just fine, even the modified Mustang Cobra that had 700 HP was able to stop, albeit it took a few hundred feet.
All of these incidents are people who simply don't know how their vehicle operates.
I sure hope they allow for "upconverting" (yes, I realize it's just smoothing the edges). With the huge increase in power over the Wii, there's no reason not to have it.
Well given the powers SCOTUS recently granted the Federal government, I can see Apple starting to petition Congress that they need to pass a law mandating everyone over the age of 18 purchase a new iPhone at least once every other year or face a $1,000 "tax" each year that they do not comply.
I used to buy some Apple products and then ditched my iPhone for an Android phone - and that was just a matter of personal preference. However, once Apple decided to start filing bogus lawsuits instead of making a better product, that's why I said "Fuck Apple, I'm never buying from them again".
Right, because shooting a black person trying to murder you is crazy. Of course - now if it had been the same exact incident but it was a black guy shooting a white person, no one would care because white people's lives aren't as valuable.
Hey, Chief - try looking at facts and not the racist bullshit surrounding the case. They even just released evidence this week showing that other than the bullet wound, Trayvon's only injuries were his hands being bruised / bloody from punching. They also showed that Zimmerman had two black eyes, a broken nose, and cuts / fractures on the back of his head. That's 100% consistent with what witnesses and Zimmerman stated, that Trayvon jumped Zimmerman and beat the hell out of him, including pounding his head into the pavement, and in order to keep from being murdered, Zimmerman shot him.
But hey why would facts matter to a bigot like you?
How can you say the media doesn't have much or anything to do with it when they blatantly ignore candidates and try to shape public perception of other candidates?
Try reading things from the Founding Fathers, such as the Federalist Papers. They were pretty goddamn specific. The problem is people like you like to twist words so that you can justify all sorts of new government powers, just like you twisted "interstate commerce" to mean "anything the Federal government wants to regulate".
There are plenty of big government, anti-citizens rights countries out there - why destroy the one country that tried to give people freedom when you could move to a pre-existing "utopia"?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, as long as you stay in the right lane when driving like a granny, I'm totally fine with it. It's when people pull that crap in the middle or left lane that makes me want to Hulk out.
Nothing that has ever been proposed would do this, because they almost never acquire their guns via legal means. Making it even more illegal doesn't do anything. Also, the only way the "lunatics and felons" would be stopped by a background check is if they have already proven themselves to be dangerous - if they have proven themselves to be a threat, then they the hell are they free to harm others instead of being locked up?
Beyond this, it is a childish fantasy to believe that the fat-slobs from the local "militia" are ever going to overthrow jack-shit.
Now you sound exactly like the British back in the late 1700's. There are around 100 million gun owners in the US and total military, police, and Federal agent forces are about 4 million. Assuming no one employed by the government switches sides, that's still being outnumbered 25 to 1. Also, your comment shows just how little you know of gun owners, with the typical gun owner being better trained than the typical police officer. Try looking up data on police accuracy and their training requirements - it's a sick joke to claim that the police in the US are "well trained" with guns.
Simply put: A direct confrontation with the U.S. military where you attempt to "restore our freedoms" would be a pathetic, one-sided massacre. Every participant would be dead in minutes, hours if they're really "lucky." The survivors would be rounded up, tried for treason, and executed.
It would be a massacre, but the other way around. You don't seem to grasp how much the US government relies on civilian contractors and how much they exaggerate the effectiveness of their fancy toys. Chris Dorner evaded thousands of officer and drone surveillance for a week - ONE MAN versus all of that, imagined what almost half of the adults in the country could do?
Your best hope for restoring lost rights is, and always will be, the ballot box.
Ah yes, because throwing pieces of paper at the government while they shoot at you is really effective /sarc. Please show me one example, just one, of a society regaining their freedom through peaceful elections without any use of force.
Show me a person who thinks he can effectively "defend" his constitutional rights with his civilian caliber semi-automatic pistol/rifle and I'll show you somebody who hasn't spent even ten minutes in the military.
Look in a mirror and I'll show you someone who has no idea how little firearms training our troops actually receive. I have several family members who served in the military and they never did any training with a pistol, only with rifles. Even recent government releases (regarding the DHS ammo purchases) show that the typical soldier in the US military only fires 350 rounds PER YEAR for training. That's just sad, seeing how the average gun owner can easily go through 1,000 rounds in a few hours at the range. Don't buy into the propaganda about our "amazingly trained" military - they're not that well trained and we mostly rely on sheer numbers to win wars.
If data on crime rates in various states is anything to go by, it seems that allowing law abiding citizens to carry a gun for protection is far more effective (and much, MUCH cheaper) than having more policemen.
This, 100%. I've been trying to explain this to a "friend" of mine who worships the police. He keeps claiming that if the police do it, it's OK. He totally ignores instance of murder, rape, assault, etc committed by the police and demands that everyone praise ALL cops as "heroes".
Slight correction, since 1991 the murder rate has dropped from 9.8 per 100,000 (it's peak) to 4.7 per 100,000 in 2011. That's pretty damn impressive. The rest of your post is spot on.
Not true. Making it so that companies cannot deny someone with a pre-existing condition, saying that older (more costly) people cannot be charged more than three times what young (less costly) people, etc raises premiums for healthy people - so yes, you are paying for their insurance through your higher premiums. I'm OK with saying that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied, but they should have to pay more as a result of costing more (I'd even be OK with saying that they can't charge more than X% of your yearly income in order to prevent people with major illnesses from going bankrupt).
If you look at the statistics, we literally have one kid per million Americans ending up getting shot (whether murdered or on accident). While I agree with the notion of teaching firearms safety in schools, the myth that we have lots of kids being shot just isn't true.
Vermont is trying to pass a law taxing anyone who doesn't own a gun. Their rationale is that people who do not own guns are more likely to call the police and thus use more taxpayer provided services, thus they should have to pay more as a result of using the services more.
Even more important than no gerrymandering is a method of punishing politicians who violate the Constitution. Simply voiding an unconstitutional law obviously does not deter them from promoting and passing unconstitutional legislation in the future. If they faced large fines and prison time (no chance for a pardon) for supporting a law found to be unconstitutional, politicians would be much less likely to ignore it and violate our rights.
Right, which is why no other Renault's have had this problem and his car never had the problem of the brake pedal being routed to the accelerator until that day. Again, if it was a mistake in the design of the car, it would have happened from day one or happened in all models of the car - not one car on one random day - a day the driver also admits to having had seizures while driving.
Those are not manual transmissions - they are "semi-auto" or "automated-manual" transmissions. Thus, there is no clutch pedal on the car.
Ah, now I'm remembering why I haven't been on /. in a year or so. People here are so convinced that they and their fellow man are infallible that they would rather make absurd claims about machines magically changing their function than to accept that humans do stupid shit all the time and then try to blame it on inanimate objects.
Yes, and seeing how multiple times with other vehicles people claiming that it was "accelerating on its own" were later found to have been pushing the wrong pedal, what seems more likely - that the car was possessed and the brakes sped it up or that the driver wasn't thinking and kept pushing the wrong pedal? Seriously, stop and think rationally for a moment - which is more logical, the brake pedal spontaneously causing acceleration or the user pushing the wrong pedal?
Hydraulically assisted isn't the same as electronically controlled....
If you read up on it, you'll find out that every case the car could have been stopped just fine if the drive had used their brain. Even on a 540 HP Roush Mustang, you can stop it with the throttle floored at 100 mph just by using the brakes. Then there's always putting the car into neutral, park (not ideal) or just turning it off (again, not ideal). The problem is that the drivers A) don't think because they're scared B) push the wrong pedal (if I recall right, black boxes from Toyota's a few years back showed that none of the drivers claiming runaway cars hit the brakes) or C) don't operate the car properly, such as if it has a push button ignition they just push the button quickly - which won't turn it off (safety feature to prevent you from accidentally turning the car off while driving) - you need to push and hold the button for a few seconds for it to shut the engine off while driving.
Sorry, but you really shouldn't blame companies, engineers, governments, or vehicles for user error.
No, you're thinking of the throttle. I'm unable to find mention of any car with a drive-by-wire clutch.
So their brilliant technician couldn't even come up with the idea to hit the brakes? That makes me thankful Renault's aren't sold in the US if their techs can't even figure out how to push the brakes, put the car in neutral, or simply turn it off. Before you claim "he was going too fast for the brakes to stop him", that's not true at all. Car and Driver tested various cars for this after the claims of Toyota's accelerating on their own and showed that even modified sports cars (like a Roush Mustang) have brakes powerful enough to stop the car when the pedal is stuck to the floor. http://www.caranddriver.com/features/how-to-deal-with-unintended-acceleration
Not to mention that the brakes in all cars are more powerful than the engines. A couple of years ago after the claims that Toyota's were accelerating on their own, Car and Driver decided to take several cars out, get them up to 100 mph and then hit the brakes while keeping the throttle floored. Every car stopped just fine, even the modified Mustang Cobra that had 700 HP was able to stop, albeit it took a few hundred feet. All of these incidents are people who simply don't know how their vehicle operates.
I sure hope they allow for "upconverting" (yes, I realize it's just smoothing the edges). With the huge increase in power over the Wii, there's no reason not to have it.
Well given the powers SCOTUS recently granted the Federal government, I can see Apple starting to petition Congress that they need to pass a law mandating everyone over the age of 18 purchase a new iPhone at least once every other year or face a $1,000 "tax" each year that they do not comply.
I used to buy some Apple products and then ditched my iPhone for an Android phone - and that was just a matter of personal preference. However, once Apple decided to start filing bogus lawsuits instead of making a better product, that's why I said "Fuck Apple, I'm never buying from them again".
Right, because shooting a black person trying to murder you is crazy. Of course - now if it had been the same exact incident but it was a black guy shooting a white person, no one would care because white people's lives aren't as valuable.
But hey why would facts matter to a bigot like you?
How can you say the media doesn't have much or anything to do with it when they blatantly ignore candidates and try to shape public perception of other candidates?
That's how representative democracy works
Yes, but it stops working when we essentially have one party and you have little to no say in who the candidates are.
There are plenty of big government, anti-citizens rights countries out there - why destroy the one country that tried to give people freedom when you could move to a pre-existing "utopia"?