Again, let me point you to Merriam-Webster. Here's "obscure":
: not well-known : not known to most people
Which, if you're operating a commercial service, is an unacceptable excuse.
: difficult to understand : likely to be understood by only a few people
Which, if you're operating a commercial service, is an unacceptable excuse.
: difficult or impossible to know completely and with certainty
Which, if you're operating a commercial service, is an unacceptable excuse.
The second and third usages are perfectly acceptable. I did not mean "not well-known", but uncertain or difficult to know.
None of which matters, as ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. Especially when said law is directly relevant to the commercial business you're operating, and especially especially when said law has existed almost as long as the automobile has.
Think of it this way: If, say, Monsanto dumped a bunch of chemicals into your local aquifer, would you accept "well, we didn't know it was illegal, the law is so obscure" as a legitimate defense?
He said, "every adult male is issued an assault rifle," right? OK, so by anti-gun thinking, it would be a trivial matter for criminals to break into the homes of adult males and steal fully automatic, military grade weapons (at least, that's the argument a lot of them seem to make against private firearm ownership in America). Thus, as every Swiss household with at least one adult male is verified to have an assault weapon, and I can only assume there are a fair number of adult males in Switzerland, one can assume that, regardless of restrictions on the weapons legal owner, automatic rifles are "highly available" in that country. Again, per common anti-gun propaganda, the mere existence of these guns means that there should be a high rate of gun crime, regardless of how well they're stored, or how well trained their owners happen to be.
But that's not the case; Switzerland has a much lower gun-related homicide rate than the US, despite an increased availability of automatic weapons. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the ubiquity of the tool's presence is not the deciding factor in gun-related crime rates, but rather the culture surrounding them.
If our culture mirrored the Swiss (i.e., every adult male is conscripted, trained, and issued an assault rifle), one can presume that, regardless of how many guns exist within our borders, gun-related crime would drop significantly. Ergo, a culture issue.
You say that, but you don't own a car company, do you? Supply and demand, my friend, and nobody is demanding cars that protect other people before protecting the people actually in said car.
I'd be interested in cars like these.
Then you're either A) full of it, or B) an outlier. Either way, it would be impossible to deny that most people buy cars with high crash/impact safety ratings for their own protection rather than the protection of those around them.
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not talking about picking MY car. I'm talking about voting for laws that dictate what choices you are allowed to have when you go to buy YOUR car. Those same laws would also apply to me, of course.
OK, then yes, there has been a misunderstanding.
In regards to this statement of yours, the USDOT does have safety regulations in regards to automobile manufacture, which include protocols for non-occupant safety measures; you can find the list of standards here, if you have the stomach for thousands of pages of legalese.
I'm not suggesting that people would choose a car that doesn't favor themselves given a free choice. I'm saying that it is in everybody's interest to deny themselves and everybody else the opportunity to make that choice.
So, you don't like that people have freedom? That's sad if you're an American. That it's in "everybody's interest" to deny individual freedom is your opinion, one I do not share, and one that makes me think you didn't pay a whole lot of attention during your high school Civics classes. See, the way I was taught about the American system of governance, individual liberty takes top priority, outside the obvious that one does not have the liberty to intentionally and directly deny liberty to others.
If you really have such a problem with other people having the freedom to choose to put their own livelihood above that of others, I recommend moving to some other country, one that does not have a constitution wholly based on the concept of individual freedom. England would be a good first choice, one would think.
If I were given the choice
Ironic that you would use such a statement right after claiming that you don't think people in a supposedly free nation should not, in fact, be given any choice in the matter.
If I were given the choice of buying a machete that I could use to prune my bushes, or a machete which additionally comes with legal immunity if I use it to kill somebody, then I'm obviously going to pick the latter even if just to protect me in case I kill somebody with it by accident. Society would never let anybody sell such a machete, and it shouldn't let people sell cars that will endanger lives unnecessarily.
You should have stopped one paragraph sooner - I can't count the logical fallacies in that last one. Reductio ad absurdum, non sequitur, false equivalence, strawman argument... the list goes on and on.
If by "self-correcting" you mean "perp will just continually re-register as a new user every time
With a new email address, new mobile device, etc. Right. If someone has 10 phones, then yeah, they can scam the system more than someone with 1 phone.
Where are you getting all this information, like how much parking spaces will go for, and how they plan on authenticating sellers? Because I read TFA, and even went so far as to look at the app page for Monkey Parking, and I've seen none of it.
Well, scratch that - TFA has a screenshot of the app, which shows that bids increase in $5 increments, so the whole "$5 parking space" bit from your earlier post is obviously not the case.
Unless it's a really crappy one nobody wants to bid on, I suppose.
What appears to be happening here is that you have an idea of how you think the app should work, and are thus assuming that said idea is how the app actually works. Which is, as Spock might say, "illogical, Captain."
I will offer the caveat that your ideas are good ones, and if the founder of this 'company' had half a brain, he'd jump right on applying your suggestions to his business model. Probably won't save him from lawsuits, but some armor is still better than no armor.
Even so, if you see 2 spots offered, and one user has 0 reviews, and the other has 50 good reviews, who are you going to pick?
Neither, 'cuz I'm not a sucker. Speaking hypothetically as though I were, I'd probably go for the one that's closest to wherever I need to be. "50 good reviews" means exactly squat when the space in question is significantly farther away from my destination than the alternative.
So.. you would have no problem with not knowing that the person who is "giving you a ride" was twice convicted of rape, and spent some time in the hokey for kidnapping?
If you do that in the US... They'll never let you out of prison.
Do what? Have three violent felony convictions?
Oh, if only that were true... there would be no such thing as "repeat offenders."
You say that, but you don't own a car company, do you? Supply and demand, my friend, and nobody is demanding cars that protect other people before protecting the people actually in said car.
I'd be interested in cars like these.
Then you're either A) full of it, or B) an outlier. Either way, it would be impossible to deny that most people buy cars with high crash/impact safety ratings for their own protection rather than the protection of those around them. Unless, of course, you choose to reject reality and substitute your own... but then you might as well deny that water is wet.
Seriously, go to any dealership and ask the salespeople how many times a person comes in specifically looking for a car that's safer for other drivers/pedestrians than themselves. I'd bet dollars to pesos the most common answer you'll hear is "never," possible augmented with a, "but check out the new Jetta, it has a 5-star frontal crash rating!"
If the law is as clear as you suggest, then drivers should not be able to sue Uber.
I would assume that is predicated on whether or not Uber knew that the service their drivers provide is considered commercial business, and whether or not they disclosed said legality to said drivers. I.e., if Uber knew they were breaking the law, and did not disclose that fact to their drivers, then I can see how they could be considered at least partially liable.
1) If the law is as clear as you suggest, then drivers should not be able to sue Uber. The drivers themselves are responsible.
I never suggested the law was clear, I merely pointed out that it exists, and everyone is expected to follow it. "Clear" is not the antonym of "obscure" - that would be "well-known."
2) The problem is the definition of "commercial".
No problem at all - are you doing it for a taxable profit? If the answer is "yes," then it's commercial use. At least, it is where I live.
If you carpool with a friend, is it commercial?
Only if you charge for the service - the law doesn't care what kind of personal relationship you have with your customers.
If you barter a car lift for some other good, is it commercial?
By American law, yes. No idea how the Aussies treat barter, at least in a legal sense.
If you occasionally give people lifts for money, is it commercial?
Obviously.
Those are all gray, contrary to what you are suggesting.
Actually, they aren't, as I've succintly pointed out. You may disagree with this, but as with personal relationships with customers, the law could care less what you think - you provide a service in exchange for taxable income, you're operating commercially. Period.
Another example of how regulations are ambiguous is those that require a good to be "manufactured" in a certain place. For instance, the Chinese government contemplated having such restriction when it lifted its game console ban. The question is how much manufacture counts. Does putting the label on count as "manufacturing"? The point is that such categories are not as easy to define as you suggest.
Non-sequitur - we're talking about services, not manufacturing goods. Don't move goalposts.
Yes, the definition of "commercial" is superficially clear, but in reality it is not.
The only definition that matters in this case is the legal one.
... and the first time someone leaves a spot as soon as the check clears, and someone who didn't pay swipes it, the fraud lawsuits will ensure that this "service" ceases to exist.
A lawsuit over a parking spot that you paid $5 for?
Didn't know they already had set prices. Oh, right, they don't, it's a bidding system.
And yea, this is CA we're talking about, it wouldn't surprise me one iota if someone sued over 5 bucks. Of course, the class action is what they should really be worried about...
How about the app has a rating system instead? You see a spot offered by someone with 5 ratings that say he left without letting you get ready, then you don't bid on that spot. He doesn't get any bidders, he stops making money. It's a self-correcting problem.
If by "self-correcting" you mean "perp will just continually re-register as a new user every time, thus circumventing the rating system," then yea, totally self-correcting. You seem to have far more faith in the ignorance and altruism of criminals than I do.
Leave the lawyers out of it
Hey, I'd love to. But then again, I'm not the kind of dope who's gonna pay for a public parking space, i.e. one with more money than sense.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahaha.... oh wait, you're serious. Jesus christ.
So let's take a look at the things that you're saying that aren't true, first. Switzerland - Every adult MALE is issued an assault rifle, WHEN THEY GO INTO THE MILITIA, at the age of 18 - when they are trained to use them. If they want to keep them, however, they remove the autofire, so it's no longer a "true assault rifle", whatever you meant by that. If they want to actually CARRY the guns, they have to go through an extensive permitting process, where basically everyone who doesn't have a need to carry (people in the security field) get rejected
So, then, you agree with OP's premise that the issue isn't availability of firearms, but rather is a cultural one.
Good to have that cleared up. Not sure why the smart-ass tone.
He's simply stating that up until the point the crime was underway, the shooter was not acting illegally,
Replace "shooter" with "person."
so all the NRA hysterics about protecting "innocent gun owners" means absolutely nothing.
So all the ACLU hysterics about protecting "innocent people" also means absolutely nothing, right? Or do the rules change when we're talking about a right other people have that you don't like? For the record, I support the shit out of the ACLU, especially when they're protecting the rights of people with less-than-popular opinions.
Plus every single one of the guns used in these crimes was, at one point, legally sold to a responsible, legal gun owner.
Riiiight... because a person who values human life so little that they would willfully and harmfully take someone else's is totally above theft and/or buying shit from thieves.
Obviously gun owners can't be trusted, as their guns fall into the hands of criminals.
Obviously [item] owners can't be trusted, as their [items] fall into the hands of criminals.
See what I did there? I generalized your statement, so maybe, if you put a little thought into it, you can see how ridiculous your premise is. Should we ban people from owning cars, or hammers, or metal pipes, because a fraction of a fraction of a percent might fall into criminal hands? I assume you would not agree... either that, or you're posting from North Korea.
You can't have it both ways.
If, by that, you mean that you can't claim to support, say, the First Amendment, without also supporting the Constitution as a whole, I'd have to agree. But I somehow doubt that's what you're saying.
Thus the murder rate involving firearms would go down (since you imply it is because of these problems, and not the availability of guns, that people shoot people).
FTFY. There's no way to prove that a lack of one tool will prevent anyone from committing murder; if a person has an intent to harm another, they're probably going to do it, regardless of what tool they choose for the job - proven by the fact that more American citizens are beaten to death than shot with long rifles.
The irony being, of course, that most anti-gun politicians want to ban long rifles, but keep pistols.
While we are bickering over whether you can trust me with a firearm or not, the social factors that lead to violence are only getting worse.
Uh, citation? Every report I've heard says that violence, crime, and most related things have been declining for years in the US and continue to do so...
Well, here's a citation that shows indeed, the US crime rate has been dropping at a fairly steady pace since 1994.
I think the problem is that a lot of people equate an increase in the amount of violent crime reported by the MSM (a consequence of the 24-hour "news" cycle) with an increase in the actual crime rate.
there is no way to stop criminals from committing crimes.
Exactly. There is no way to stop criminals from committing crimes.
The point of gun control is to reduce the number of (violent) crimes committed.
A point that is, at least in America, an abject failure, judging from the violent crime rates in places like Chicago and Detroit. Obviously the issue is more one of culture than access to certain tools.
So.. you would have no problem with not knowing that the person who is "giving you a ride" was twice convicted of rape, and spent some time in the hokey for kidnapping?
And... are you okay with these people protecting you from rapists, murderers and convicted drunk drivers?
What do corrupt politicians have to do with criminal background checks of commercial drivers?
So, are you saying that a computer is infallible, or that society would be less likely to overlook mistakes made by it? If the former, that's insane; if the latter... yea, that's a pretty good summation of group-think.
A computer isn't infallible, but it can be made less fallible than a person. Few drivers are seriously trained in handling accident situations. I've never been in an accident, and while I can speculate as to how I'd perform in one, I really have no evidence to back up such a claim. Maybe if I spent 100 hours a year in a driving simulator dealing with accident situations I could wax philosophical about the advantages of having a human brain behind the wheel. Most likely any computer-driven car will have far more testing in collision scenarios than almost any driver on the road.
Having been involved in a few MVAs myself, I can't say I disagree - even if 1 of the vehicles involved had been computer controlled, at least 2 of the accidents I can remember off the top of my head would have been 100 percent avoidable.
Which brings us back to the point of, nobody's going to pay good money for a vehicle that doesn't put occupant safety as the highest priority.
Well, they can always walk.
You say that, but you don't own a car company, do you? Supply and demand, my friend, and nobody is demanding cars that protect other people before protecting the people actually in said car.
I find it somewhat ironic that the only recourse mentioned in the summary is for the drivers to sue Uber. What about suing the government instead?
For what? Not allowing them to skirt a law that everyone else has to follow?
It seems ridiculous to have legislation which is so obscure that you can't know for sure if something is legal or illegal until some regulatory agency made a ruling.
If you think being required to obtain a commercial driver's license is "obscure" legislation, I'd say you have no business so much as discussing this topic. It's not a new concept.
The great thing about Libertarianism is that you aren't required to agree 100% with the other members, unlike some other, more prominent political parties (or rather, party) who shall remain nameless.
So.. you would have no problem with not knowing that the person who is "giving you a ride" was twice convicted of rape, and spent some time in the hokey for kidnapping?
How are convicted felons ever going to find work if we put background checks on everything?
While I concur that felony convictions are often used to continue to punish minor and non-violent offenders far beyond what would be considered reasonably, that doesn't mean that the concept of criminal background checks is "completely unnecessary," as evidenced by the question I posed above. Throwin' the baby out with the bathwater, that's what you're doing here.
Besides if it gets too hard to buy or import them, you could always build them.
A nice 1911 copy could probably be made in a fairly small shop these days with a PC and some decent metal working machines. I am not a gun smith but if they could make these in 1911 it doesn't seem like much of a tech barrier to just clone them now.
And how is it "scalping"? They're merely offering to delay leaving their spot if someone pays them to do so. Basically they're selling their time.
... and the first time someone leaves a spot as soon as the check clears, and someone who didn't pay swipes it, the fraud lawsuits will ensure that this "service" ceases to exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, let me point you to Merriam-Webster. Here's "obscure":
: not well-known : not known to most people
Which, if you're operating a commercial service, is an unacceptable excuse.
: difficult to understand : likely to be understood by only a few people
Which, if you're operating a commercial service, is an unacceptable excuse.
: difficult or impossible to know completely and with certainty
Which, if you're operating a commercial service, is an unacceptable excuse.
The second and third usages are perfectly acceptable. I did not mean "not well-known", but uncertain or difficult to know.
None of which matters, as ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. Especially when said law is directly relevant to the commercial business you're operating, and especially especially when said law has existed almost as long as the automobile has.
Think of it this way: If, say, Monsanto dumped a bunch of chemicals into your local aquifer, would you accept "well, we didn't know it was illegal, the law is so obscure" as a legitimate defense?
He said, "every adult male is issued an assault rifle," right? OK, so by anti-gun thinking, it would be a trivial matter for criminals to break into the homes of adult males and steal fully automatic, military grade weapons (at least, that's the argument a lot of them seem to make against private firearm ownership in America). Thus, as every Swiss household with at least one adult male is verified to have an assault weapon, and I can only assume there are a fair number of adult males in Switzerland, one can assume that, regardless of restrictions on the weapons legal owner, automatic rifles are "highly available" in that country. Again, per common anti-gun propaganda, the mere existence of these guns means that there should be a high rate of gun crime, regardless of how well they're stored, or how well trained their owners happen to be.
But that's not the case; Switzerland has a much lower gun-related homicide rate than the US, despite an increased availability of automatic weapons. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the ubiquity of the tool's presence is not the deciding factor in gun-related crime rates, but rather the culture surrounding them.
If our culture mirrored the Swiss (i.e., every adult male is conscripted, trained, and issued an assault rifle), one can presume that, regardless of how many guns exist within our borders, gun-related crime would drop significantly. Ergo, a culture issue.
You say that, but you don't own a car company, do you? Supply and demand, my friend, and nobody is demanding cars that protect other people before protecting the people actually in said car.
I'd be interested in cars like these.
Then you're either A) full of it, or B) an outlier. Either way, it would be impossible to deny that most people buy cars with high crash/impact safety ratings for their own protection rather than the protection of those around them.
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not talking about picking MY car. I'm talking about voting for laws that dictate what choices you are allowed to have when you go to buy YOUR car. Those same laws would also apply to me, of course.
OK, then yes, there has been a misunderstanding.
In regards to this statement of yours, the USDOT does have safety regulations in regards to automobile manufacture, which include protocols for non-occupant safety measures; you can find the list of standards here, if you have the stomach for thousands of pages of legalese.
I'm not suggesting that people would choose a car that doesn't favor themselves given a free choice. I'm saying that it is in everybody's interest to deny themselves and everybody else the opportunity to make that choice.
So, you don't like that people have freedom? That's sad if you're an American. That it's in "everybody's interest" to deny individual freedom is your opinion, one I do not share, and one that makes me think you didn't pay a whole lot of attention during your high school Civics classes. See, the way I was taught about the American system of governance, individual liberty takes top priority, outside the obvious that one does not have the liberty to intentionally and directly deny liberty to others.
If you really have such a problem with other people having the freedom to choose to put their own livelihood above that of others, I recommend moving to some other country, one that does not have a constitution wholly based on the concept of individual freedom. England would be a good first choice, one would think.
If I were given the choice
Ironic that you would use such a statement right after claiming that you don't think people in a supposedly free nation should not, in fact, be given any choice in the matter.
If I were given the choice of buying a machete that I could use to prune my bushes, or a machete which additionally comes with legal immunity if I use it to kill somebody, then I'm obviously going to pick the latter even if just to protect me in case I kill somebody with it by accident. Society would never let anybody sell such a machete, and it shouldn't let people sell cars that will endanger lives unnecessarily.
You should have stopped one paragraph sooner - I can't count the logical fallacies in that last one. Reductio ad absurdum, non sequitur, false equivalence, strawman argument... the list goes on and on.
If by "self-correcting" you mean "perp will just continually re-register as a new user every time
With a new email address, new mobile device, etc. Right. If someone has 10 phones, then yeah, they can scam the system more than someone with 1 phone.
Where are you getting all this information, like how much parking spaces will go for, and how they plan on authenticating sellers? Because I read TFA, and even went so far as to look at the app page for Monkey Parking, and I've seen none of it.
Well, scratch that - TFA has a screenshot of the app, which shows that bids increase in $5 increments, so the whole "$5 parking space" bit from your earlier post is obviously not the case.
Unless it's a really crappy one nobody wants to bid on, I suppose.
What appears to be happening here is that you have an idea of how you think the app should work, and are thus assuming that said idea is how the app actually works. Which is, as Spock might say, "illogical, Captain."
I will offer the caveat that your ideas are good ones, and if the founder of this 'company' had half a brain, he'd jump right on applying your suggestions to his business model. Probably won't save him from lawsuits, but some armor is still better than no armor.
Even so, if you see 2 spots offered, and one user has 0 reviews, and the other has 50 good reviews, who are you going to pick?
Neither, 'cuz I'm not a sucker. Speaking hypothetically as though I were, I'd probably go for the one that's closest to wherever I need to be. "50 good reviews" means exactly squat when the space in question is significantly farther away from my destination than the alternative.
So.. you would have no problem with not knowing that the person who is "giving you a ride" was twice convicted of rape, and spent some time in the hokey for kidnapping?
If you do that in the US... They'll never let you out of prison.
Do what? Have three violent felony convictions?
Oh, if only that were true... there would be no such thing as "repeat offenders."
You say that, but you don't own a car company, do you? Supply and demand, my friend, and nobody is demanding cars that protect other people before protecting the people actually in said car.
I'd be interested in cars like these.
Then you're either A) full of it, or B) an outlier. Either way, it would be impossible to deny that most people buy cars with high crash/impact safety ratings for their own protection rather than the protection of those around them. Unless, of course, you choose to reject reality and substitute your own... but then you might as well deny that water is wet.
Seriously, go to any dealership and ask the salespeople how many times a person comes in specifically looking for a car that's safer for other drivers/pedestrians than themselves. I'd bet dollars to pesos the most common answer you'll hear is "never," possible augmented with a, "but check out the new Jetta, it has a 5-star frontal crash rating!"
Forgot one point:
If the law is as clear as you suggest, then drivers should not be able to sue Uber.
I would assume that is predicated on whether or not Uber knew that the service their drivers provide is considered commercial business, and whether or not they disclosed said legality to said drivers. I.e., if Uber knew they were breaking the law, and did not disclose that fact to their drivers, then I can see how they could be considered at least partially liable.
1) If the law is as clear as you suggest, then drivers should not be able to sue Uber. The drivers themselves are responsible.
I never suggested the law was clear, I merely pointed out that it exists, and everyone is expected to follow it. "Clear" is not the antonym of "obscure" - that would be "well-known."
2) The problem is the definition of "commercial".
No problem at all - are you doing it for a taxable profit? If the answer is "yes," then it's commercial use. At least, it is where I live.
If you carpool with a friend, is it commercial?
Only if you charge for the service - the law doesn't care what kind of personal relationship you have with your customers.
If you barter a car lift for some other good, is it commercial?
By American law, yes. No idea how the Aussies treat barter, at least in a legal sense.
If you occasionally give people lifts for money, is it commercial?
Obviously.
Those are all gray, contrary to what you are suggesting.
Actually, they aren't, as I've succintly pointed out. You may disagree with this, but as with personal relationships with customers, the law could care less what you think - you provide a service in exchange for taxable income, you're operating commercially. Period.
Another example of how regulations are ambiguous is those that require a good to be "manufactured" in a certain place. For instance, the Chinese government contemplated having such restriction when it lifted its game console ban. The question is how much manufacture counts. Does putting the label on count as "manufacturing"? The point is that such categories are not as easy to define as you suggest.
Non-sequitur - we're talking about services, not manufacturing goods. Don't move goalposts.
Yes, the definition of "commercial" is superficially clear, but in reality it is not.
The only definition that matters in this case is the legal one.
... and the first time someone leaves a spot as soon as the check clears, and someone who didn't pay swipes it, the fraud lawsuits will ensure that this "service" ceases to exist.
A lawsuit over a parking spot that you paid $5 for?
Didn't know they already had set prices. Oh, right, they don't, it's a bidding system.
And yea, this is CA we're talking about, it wouldn't surprise me one iota if someone sued over 5 bucks. Of course, the class action is what they should really be worried about...
How about the app has a rating system instead? You see a spot offered by someone with 5 ratings that say he left without letting you get ready, then you don't bid on that spot. He doesn't get any bidders, he stops making money. It's a self-correcting problem.
If by "self-correcting" you mean "perp will just continually re-register as a new user every time, thus circumventing the rating system," then yea, totally self-correcting. You seem to have far more faith in the ignorance and altruism of criminals than I do.
Leave the lawyers out of it
Hey, I'd love to. But then again, I'm not the kind of dope who's gonna pay for a public parking space, i.e. one with more money than sense.
no-one here is walking/driving around with their rifle for "self protection".
I presume by "here" you mean Switzerland.
For the record, not a lot of Americans are walking/driving around with rifles, either. We prefer handguns, for many obvious reasons.
Usually, you only see Americans openly displaying rifles during either hunting season or pro-2nd Amendment rallies.
Oh, yea, and we also have a 2nd Amendment right to "keep and bear arms." That's probably important to point out.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahaha.... oh wait, you're serious. Jesus christ.
So let's take a look at the things that you're saying that aren't true, first. Switzerland - Every adult MALE is issued an assault rifle, WHEN THEY GO INTO THE MILITIA, at the age of 18 - when they are trained to use them. If they want to keep them, however, they remove the autofire, so it's no longer a "true assault rifle", whatever you meant by that. If they want to actually CARRY the guns, they have to go through an extensive permitting process, where basically everyone who doesn't have a need to carry (people in the security field) get rejected
So, then, you agree with OP's premise that the issue isn't availability of firearms, but rather is a cultural one.
Good to have that cleared up. Not sure why the smart-ass tone.
He's simply stating that up until the point the crime was underway, the shooter was not acting illegally,
Replace "shooter" with "person."
so all the NRA hysterics about protecting "innocent gun owners" means absolutely nothing.
So all the ACLU hysterics about protecting "innocent people" also means absolutely nothing, right? Or do the rules change when we're talking about a right other people have that you don't like? For the record, I support the shit out of the ACLU, especially when they're protecting the rights of people with less-than-popular opinions.
Plus every single one of the guns used in these crimes was, at one point, legally sold to a responsible, legal gun owner.
Riiiight... because a person who values human life so little that they would willfully and harmfully take someone else's is totally above theft and/or buying shit from thieves.
Obviously gun owners can't be trusted, as their guns fall into the hands of criminals.
Obviously [item] owners can't be trusted, as their [items] fall into the hands of criminals.
See what I did there? I generalized your statement, so maybe, if you put a little thought into it, you can see how ridiculous your premise is. Should we ban people from owning cars, or hammers, or metal pipes, because a fraction of a fraction of a percent might fall into criminal hands? I assume you would not agree... either that, or you're posting from North Korea.
You can't have it both ways.
If, by that, you mean that you can't claim to support, say, the First Amendment, without also supporting the Constitution as a whole, I'd have to agree. But I somehow doubt that's what you're saying.
Thus the murder rate involving firearms would go down (since you imply it is because of these problems, and not the availability of guns, that people shoot people).
FTFY. There's no way to prove that a lack of one tool will prevent anyone from committing murder; if a person has an intent to harm another, they're probably going to do it, regardless of what tool they choose for the job - proven by the fact that more American citizens are beaten to death than shot with long rifles.
The irony being, of course, that most anti-gun politicians want to ban long rifles, but keep pistols.
While we are bickering over whether you can trust me with a firearm or not, the social factors that lead to violence are only getting worse.
Uh, citation? Every report I've heard says that violence, crime, and most related things have been declining for years in the US and continue to do so...
Well, here's a citation that shows indeed, the US crime rate has been dropping at a fairly steady pace since 1994.
I think the problem is that a lot of people equate an increase in the amount of violent crime reported by the MSM (a consequence of the 24-hour "news" cycle) with an increase in the actual crime rate.
Exactly. There is no way to stop criminals from committing crimes.
The point of gun control is to reduce the number of (violent) crimes committed.
A point that is, at least in America, an abject failure, judging from the violent crime rates in places like Chicago and Detroit. Obviously the issue is more one of culture than access to certain tools.
That "cocaine hydrochloric solution" is not the same as "cocaine?"
So.. you would have no problem with not knowing that the person who is "giving you a ride" was twice convicted of rape, and spent some time in the hokey for kidnapping?
And... are you okay with these people protecting you from rapists, murderers and convicted drunk drivers?
What do corrupt politicians have to do with criminal background checks of commercial drivers?
Aside an attempt at false equivalence, that is.
So, are you saying that a computer is infallible, or that society would be less likely to overlook mistakes made by it? If the former, that's insane; if the latter... yea, that's a pretty good summation of group-think.
A computer isn't infallible, but it can be made less fallible than a person. Few drivers are seriously trained in handling accident situations. I've never been in an accident, and while I can speculate as to how I'd perform in one, I really have no evidence to back up such a claim. Maybe if I spent 100 hours a year in a driving simulator dealing with accident situations I could wax philosophical about the advantages of having a human brain behind the wheel. Most likely any computer-driven car will have far more testing in collision scenarios than almost any driver on the road.
Having been involved in a few MVAs myself, I can't say I disagree - even if 1 of the vehicles involved had been computer controlled, at least 2 of the accidents I can remember off the top of my head would have been 100 percent avoidable.
Which brings us back to the point of, nobody's going to pay good money for a vehicle that doesn't put occupant safety as the highest priority.
Well, they can always walk.
You say that, but you don't own a car company, do you? Supply and demand, my friend, and nobody is demanding cars that protect other people before protecting the people actually in said car.
I find it somewhat ironic that the only recourse mentioned in the summary is for the drivers to sue Uber. What about suing the government instead?
For what? Not allowing them to skirt a law that everyone else has to follow?
It seems ridiculous to have legislation which is so obscure that you can't know for sure if something is legal or illegal until some regulatory agency made a ruling.
If you think being required to obtain a commercial driver's license is "obscure" legislation, I'd say you have no business so much as discussing this topic. It's not a new concept.
Only the ones who've never read Snow Crash.
The great thing about Libertarianism is that you aren't required to agree 100% with the other members, unlike some other, more prominent political parties (or rather, party) who shall remain nameless.
>such as mandatory criminal record checks, vehicle inspections and insurance
Allow drivers to send those in via taking pictures of them with their phones.
Um... how do you inspect a vehicle through pictures?
"well, the picture of brake pads he sent in look good..."
Criminal record check is completely unnecessary.
So.. you would have no problem with not knowing that the person who is "giving you a ride" was twice convicted of rape, and spent some time in the hokey for kidnapping?
How are convicted felons ever going to find work if we put background checks on everything?
While I concur that felony convictions are often used to continue to punish minor and non-violent offenders far beyond what would be considered reasonably, that doesn't mean that the concept of criminal background checks is "completely unnecessary," as evidenced by the question I posed above. Throwin' the baby out with the bathwater, that's what you're doing here.
What's really the difference between this and an online dating service though?
The fact that you don't pay your dates to go out with you.
Pretty sure Craigslist has been in some shit recently for that very reason.
Besides if it gets too hard to buy or import them, you could always build them.
A nice 1911 copy could probably be made in a fairly small shop these days with a PC and some decent metal working machines. I am not a gun smith but if they could make these in 1911 it doesn't seem like much of a tech barrier to just clone them now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Hell, for $30 you can buy all the stuff needed to send a round downrange at friggin' Home Depot, no machine shop needed.
And how is it "scalping"? They're merely offering to delay leaving their spot if someone pays them to do so. Basically they're selling their time.
... and the first time someone leaves a spot as soon as the check clears, and someone who didn't pay swipes it, the fraud lawsuits will ensure that this "service" ceases to exist.