Isn't email like a post card that anyone can read in transit?
Most email servers connect to each other via an encrypted channel. So the emails aren't in plain text whilst in transit.
Unfortunately it's really not "most email servers", but only "some email servers". Most all of the big ones do use SSMTP, though, so most email is transferred via an encrypted channel.
Gmail is great in terms of reliability, spam filtering (best I've found), and features. But if you're looking for privacy, the only company that's probably worse in my mind is Facebook.
What do you mean, specifically, by privacy?
If you want to keep your family, friends, neighbors, etc. out of your email, then Gmail is great. Security is excellent, especially if you enable two-factor.
If you want to keep random hackers out of your email, then Gmail is great. Security is excellent, especially if you enable two-factor.
If you want to keep your ISP out of your email, then Gmail is great. It uses TLS connections for all client communications, and also with whatever other email servers it talks to that support it. Gmail-to-gmail communications is definitely encrypted all the time, both in transit and in storage.
If you want to keep the FBI/Police out of your email, then Gmail is as good as any US-based email provider can be. They all have to provide data in response to proper subpoenas and warrants, and Google's lawyers scrutinize requests carefully.
If you want to keep the NSA out of your email, then it's hard to say, but I suspect Gmail is quite good. Snowden revealed that the NSA was tapping Google's internal fiber, but Google has since moved to comprehensive point-to-point encryption. It's not completely impossible that the NSA has compromised the key management system that enables that, but it's actually pretty unlikely. I would assert that on this measure Gmail is as good as any large US-based email provider can be. Smaller ones may slide by the NSA because they're not interesting... but if they do become interesting they'll almost certainly be easier to pop than Google is.
(As an aside: If the NSA is targeting you specifically for surveillance, as opposed to just sweeping you up in the dragnet, you should just give up on electronic communications entirely.)
If you want to keep Google's advertising profile analytics software out of your email, then Gmail is awful. Your email will be scanned by systems that try to work out what you might be interested in buying, and this data will be correlated with web searches (if you don't have web history disabled), and data from other Google products. The resulting information will be used by Google (not by advertisers; they don't get access to the treasure trove) to show you ads for things you might want to buy, instead of things that you almost certainly don't want to buy.
The correct answer depends on the font. With monospaced fonts, two spaces after a period. With proportional fonts, it's up to the rendering system to recognize the end of the sentence and render the single space after a period as an em space. A good rendering system should recognize periods in abbreviations, and use a smaller space. But few do, so we just live with the egregiously large space in the middle of "Mr. Green".
Yeah, my hunch is in a true survey of all programmers, it's the tab-users who make more money. Tabs are a relic from the old typewriter days, so older programmers are more likely to use them. And older programs tend to make more money.
It's the other way around. Old programmers worked on systems where the size of a tab was fixed at 8 spaces and could not be changed. Since 8-space indentation is way too much, they used either a mix of tabs and spaces to get the right indentation level, or spaces only. And then when we all started to get editors with configurable tab sizes, the mixed solution resulted in an unholy mess which was most easily fixed by standardizing on spaces only.
And old programmers tend to make more money, so money is correlated with spaces-only indentation.
This ensures that for everyone, they will both see it how they want it to look AND the code won't get misaligned in these circumstances.
And it ensures that for those who use proper 8-space tabs indentation gets shoved way to the right. Which is also what happens when the code is cat'ed on a terminal, looked at in a diff program, etc., unless you configure tabs to be smaller in all of those other contexts... and then other things that expect tabs to have the correct size get broken.
Intelligent devs use IDEs that handle all this formatting nonsense for them, removing the entire argument in the first place and just get things done
I see you're a novice programmer.
IDEs do not solve this problem; they just hide it, in a way that arguably makes it worse. I made your same argument 25 years ago, saying that decent editors (like EMACS, still my editor of choice) handle all that nonsense, removing the entire argument. So, I had EMACS configured to use an optimal mix of (proper 8-space) tabs and spaces, and life was good.
Then others had to edit my code, and they cursed me, because they used tabs only, and set their tab width to the indentation level, and my code was all misaligned in their editor, and hard to read. So they "fixed" my code, and life was good.
Then others had to edit their code, and they also used tabs only, but set their tab width to a different preferred indentation level; and lots of carefully aligned code became misaligned, and hard to read. So they fixed the code to use a correct number of tabs for indentation levels, and then spaces after that for alignment (which is how their editors/IDEs were configured).
And then the code came back to me, and although the alignment was fine, my 8-space tabs pushed much of the code way to the right. So then I told my editor to reformat and replace all the tabs with appropriate numbers of spaces....
And it looked right in everyone's editors, IDEs, and when printed, and cat'ed, and everything else. It did mean that people couldn't easily use different indentation levels, but that's a small price to pay.
So... the right answer is spaces. Which is what all the old hands have learned. And old hands make more money than young novices. So this finding of correlation between salary and using only spaces makes perfect sense.
However, I've since moved on to another approach to code formatting: I do not format code. I write a configuration file for a code formatter (I'm really liking clang-format lately), and I check it in with the code, and I add a commit hook that runs all code through the formatter, with the specified config, and rejects the commit if the output of the code does not match the input.
Use whatever tool you want to edit, but you have to run the formatter before you can commit. If you're an intelligent developer, then, what you'll do is bind the formatter to a hotkey in your editor/IDE and never worry about formatting at all. I almost never hit the return key while typing code, and don't bother much with spaces or at all with tabs. I type stream-of-consciousness, format-free code, then hit the formatter hotkey.
I'll check out Amazon's offering, but I'm used to Google Music which *isn't* hit or miss. It just has, to a first approximation, All The Music. There used to be a handful of major exceptions (Beatles, Metallica, etc.), but those gaps have been closed.
People keep saying that conservatives and "right wingers" are rioting or trying to silence the left... Where?
I wasn't addressing that question, but if you want my opinion on it, here it is: I think both sides often try to silence the other. I think the left is more aggressive about it, because the left is more convinced of their own moral rightness. That makes sense, since the conservative viewpoint is less about seeking moral rightness and more about not upsetting the apple cart (there are areas in which the parties reverse, though). So the left, who believes they're focused on using the government to right past injustice, feels justified in being aggressive because their opponents clearly want to preserver injustice and are therefore bad.
It's instructive to look at the areas where the attitudes reverse. Take abortion. Pro-life Republicans do feel like that is an intensely moral issue, and although it's died down a bit in recent years, it wasn't so long ago that large groups of them physically blocked access to abortion clinics, and extremist individuals went so far as to murder doctors who performed abortions. Meanwhile, Republican legislators used their power to attempt to silence information about abortion, or to force it to be delivered only in a context that painted it in a bad light.
Of course, that saying is almost exclusively used sarcastically and intended as an insult, which makes it even harder to determine if there is racist intent. It is almost never used as an actual compliment.
The primary non-injurious use is target shooting, and that is what most of my guns are for. Many of them really wouldn't do anything else very well; they're designed for target shooting. Guns designed for self-defense are an interesting case; they're designed for killing/injuring people, but almost none of them will ever be used for that purpose. The only civilian-owned guns that really are used for killing are hunting weapons, and design follows purpose.
It's less regulated than an automobile
I disagree. You don't have to pass a background check to purchase an automobile. You do have to pass a certification in order to drive it on public roads, but not to purchase it, and not to drive it on private property. In fact, nearly all of the regulation of automobiles isn't of automobiles themselves, but related to requirements that have to be met to operated them on public roads. The equivalent for a gun is the right to carry a gun in public, which most states in the US do restrict, requiring training and background checks.
One way in which vehicles are more regulated is the fact that they have titles, and ownership is tracked. That's because of their value, though, rather than any other reason. Real estate is titled and ownership tracked for the same reason.
Yeah I too buy mine just so I can sit there and stroke them erotically.
I don't get this hoplo-erotic fascination that so many non-gunowners seem to have. I don't know anyone who actually owns guns that sees them in anything like that twisted way. They're fine pieces of machinery, some of them are works of art, many of them have sentimental value, they are tools for specific purposes... there are a lot of ways in which they're valued, some deeply emotional, but none of them remotely sexual.
For example, my favorite rifle is a fine machine, a work of art and has deep sentimental value, as well as being an excellent tool for killing big game. It's a 7mm Remington Magnum (an excellent caliber for elk, moose, bear; a little heavy for mule deer, but not too bad) that was made by my father in law. It started life as an Argentine Mauser M98 which my dad in law rechambered to 7mm. He tuned and polished the action and trigger to an incredible degree of smoothness and accuracy, and blued and polished the barrel and receiver to a beautiful high gloss. Then he handcrafted and fitted a stock of elegant birdseye maple, with polished ebony forearm and grip caps. He also elaborately hand-tooled the leather sling. The result is a breathtaking work of art (the photo doesn't do it justice) and also an incredibly smooth and accurate weapon... and it's the best memento I have of my father in law, a great man who I learned to love and appreciate deeply over the course of the almost 30 years I've known my wife. I also treasure his slide rule, but the rifle has so much more of him invested into it.
In contrast, my daily carry gun is just a tool, with no more emotion connected to it than my keys or my wallet, or my phone. Actually, I'm probably more attached to my phone. I like the gun because it's small and easily-concealable, and because it's surprisingly accurate in spite of its extremely short barrel. I can consistently hit a two-inch square from 25 feet; not anything I'd want to use in a target competition, but more than adequate for the purpose.
Various other guns have various meanings; there's my first gun, a single-shot.22LR rifle that I got when I was 12 and which I've used to teach all of my kids to shoot. My shotgun has lots of fond memories associated with it, of hunting birds with my sons, and my old bird dog (who died a couple of years ago). My old carry gun has some, because it was the gun I used to learn to shoot handguns well, and it was the one I used at at a pistol marksmanship course that I took with my dad... the first time I've ever out-shot him, an event that really brought home that he's getting old.
Actually, all of the emotional attachment I have to various guns is really just imprinted emotion from family interaction, and nothing remotely sexual in any of it (maybe if my wife were interested in guns...). Cars, on the other hand, some things have happened in various vehicles I've owned that give my thoughts about them some erotic overtones.
I'll be shocked if you actually read past the first sentence of this post, though. You're not interested in learning about reality that contradicts your assumptions.
case in point: It was *my* fault I was upset at her for cheating on me because if I hadn't checked her email I wouldn't have known.
I cannot imagine a more on-point and succinct description of BPD. That's exactly the sort of thing BPD sufferers do.
How did you handle it? How did you guide your child towards the help they needed or did you have to go with the "I'm your parent and I said so" route? because with BPDs forceful coercion doesn't really do squat (at least with adults).
Coercion, basically, and no, it didn't really accomplish much to help her get better. The main things it did were (a) keep her alive, because while she was institutionalized she was under a level of supervision that made killing herself all but impossible, a level of supervision that no parents could ever provide in a home setting and (b) force her to learn a set of tools that she could use to manage her BPD, if she chose to.
Even that was not remotely without cost. In fact, at one point it looked seriously possible that I might go to prison. We had her in a day treatment facility, and while there she convinced the therapist that her issues were all our fault, that we were verbally, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive (but that there were no marks because we were careful while she was in treatment and we were under scrutiny). She stopped just short of accusing me of sexual abuse, and actually did accuse her older brother, which led to some seriously unpleasant interactions with the police and child and family services. To this day I'm not sure why she didn't make the allegation against me; it would have been so easy for her. She's a very bright girl (woman, now), charming, personable and convincing, and she had that therapist wrapped around her finger.
The day treatment therapist believed her to the extent that he ordered us to put her into residential treatment. If we didn't, he'd write an affidavit for the police, attesting to all of our abuse. So, we put her in residential treatment. There, the therapist was wiser and she had less room for twisting the truth. The program she was in wasn't specific for BPD, it was structured for troubled teens generally, with a specific focus on substance abuse but with a recognition that substance abuse in kids is almost always a symptom as much as a problem itself. But it did include a pretty deep focus on identifying base truth and eliminating self-deception, and the therapist and staff were quite good at recognizing what was truth and what was not (calling on us as needed). The program also taught a lot of excellent strategies for self-management and even included a little bit of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, though not Dialectical Behavior Therapy (the variant of CBT that has proven most effective for BPD). The program taught, and she learned... but she didn't actually apply it until much later.
Here's another BPDism: when we put her in residential treatment, she was convinced that we had done it to "get rid of her". Never mind that the program required heavy parental and family involvement, to the point that we were at the facility seven days per week, and her treatment pretty much took over our entire lives (to the detriment of our other kids, unfortunately). Not to mention the money. Her facility was actually incredibly cheap as such things go, but it was still almost $10,000 per month. Luckily we had good insurance that covered most of it. When the massive commitment of time and resources we'd made was pointed out to her, she just argued that we only did that so we'd look good to family and neighbors. The level of brain-twisting required to follow BPD logic is enormous.
When she finally "graduated" from the treatment, after more than a year, she was actually quite improved, but still extremely hard to live with. Eventually, though, she tried to kill herself again and went back in. She was there a total of three times. By the third, they didn't keep her long because they re
That's completely irrelevant actually - indeed it's not even the purpose of background checks. The purpose of background checks is to let existing gun ownership laws actually be enforced - so that previously convicted felons (already prohibited), or dishonourably discharged serviceman cannot easily acquire a weapon they are prohibited from owning.
That just begs the question. Why do we have/need laws restricting some people from owning firearms for life? The only possible answer is to reduce violence. Personally, I think lifetime bans won't stand up to constitutional scrutiny, and are on morally questionable grounds as well. Temporary bans on the mentally ill are more justifiable, but also incredibly hard to implement in a fair and even-handed way, without deep invasion of lives and without creating the risk of deterring people who need help from seeking it, which could actually increase violence.
The point of fixing the background checks is much more simple than reducing gun violence: it's about the principle of the rule of law.
If that's the case, then we have a bigger problem: The existing background checks identify tens of thousands of illegal gun purchasers every year... and only a few hundred are prosecuted. If the problem is uneven application of the law, then you should really be up in arms over that.
Gun violence is an entirely different debate -- which should not be conflated.
So why bring up background checks in a discussion of gun violence? You should know that the vast majority of people who argue for universal background checks do believe that it is a way to reduce gun violence. That being the case, in the future you should probably make your very unusual perspective clear when you bring the issue up.
I certainly agree that background checks have basically no impact on gun violence and therefore don't meet the compelling government interest requirement of strict scrutiny. I said as much in the other post where laid out the constitutional analysis of universal checks. Your implied argument here is that they're necessary to ensure uniform application of another gun law (one that is itself constitutionally suspect), but mere uniform application clearly doesn't constitute a compelling government interest. If it did, then it would be constitutional to stop random people on the street to search them for drugs.
So, basically, you're arguing for rescinding the existing background check laws.
I have subscriptions to other things, but I feel like I get really great value out of those three. Music especially... before I tried it I said I'd never do subscription music. After I tried it, I'll never go back to buying individual songs or albums. Ad-free YouTube is a nice side-benefit.
I do feel like my Netflix subscription has decreased in value, though. It's now really only good for the original content (much of which is great). I almost never find any movies I want to watch.
I also need to look into the video/music features of the Amazon Prime subscription. I feel like I get great value just from the free shipping, so those are just bonuses.
Keep point to understand is that an ability to do "a little planning" and tendency to engage in mass murders is inversely correlated for individuals acting alone.
Cite?
It appears to me that most mass murderers do extensive planning. The fetishize it and dream about it for months, if not years. If you'd like, I can provide a long list of examples of this type. But I doubt you need me to.
I don't...if you are wanting to take yourself out, you'll take yourself out, doesn't matter the method.
The thing is, most of them don't want to. It's a cry for help./p>
Most of them who don't wan't to die choose a method that has a greater chance of being stopped, I think. I'm not a mental health professional, but I unfortunately have some direct experience.
I have a daughter who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, and like many BPD sufferers has tried many times to kill herself. For a few years there, we were at the ER at least three or four times per year, except when she was institutionalized. When she was institutionalized we also got the chance to be sometime-parents to a bunch of other girls with similar problems, and we became friends and have kept in touch since, so my experience is broader than just her.
I own many guns, and because of her disorder I've been careful to always keep them locked up... except one time. I'd been teaching a shooting class so I had a couple of.22 pistols in my truck, and I was in a hurry when I got home and didn't get them locked up right away. She took one, with the intention of killing herself with it (all previous attempts had been with pills). When I went out to get the guns I realized immediately what had happened and called the police (who knew her well). They, and we, began searching intensively for her.
When we found her, she had the gun, but had carefully unloaded it and thrown the ammunition into a swampy area. She told me that she had realized that she didn't actually want to die, and that if she used the gun no one would be able to intervene to keep her from dying.
I'm not going to claim that there aren't some people who kill themselves with a gun who wouldn't kill themselves if they didn't have a gun. But I think that most people who choose a gun choose it specifically because they aren't crying for help and really just want to end it. If they were crying for help, they'd do something more like what my daughter usually did: Take a bunch of pills then make sure she was with people who would notice and act to save her. Those who really want to die and don't have access to a gun can jump in front of a bus or a train, or off a tall building, or run a hose from their tailpipe when they're certain no one will be around all day, or any of a hundred other methods with just as high a probability of "success".
(Aside: My daughter is doing much better. It's been over three years since she attempted suicide. She still struggles with her disorder but is doing much better at building a life in spite of it. She sees a therapist weekly -- her own choice, which is important. We made her go to therapy for years, but it's dramatically less effective than when the person actually wants the help.)
Only if every auto accident is an argument to ban automobiles...
You're comparing an accident with a transportation device with an attempted homicide with a purpose built weapon. Automobiles have plenty of uses besides killing something. Firearms are purpose built weapons. Comparing the two is a false equivalency.
Guns also have plenty of uses besides killing something. Most of mine have never killed anything, and never will kill anything.
But I do own some guns that are clearly designed specifically for killing animals. And I even have some that are clearly designed specifically for injuring or killing people. They aren't for hunting, or target shooting -- they're too small, too low-powered and too inaccurate for those purposes. Yet, they will still never be used to harm anyone except in lawful defense of self or others. Their purpose is not in any way criminal.
Guns have lots of legitimate, non-criminal uses. Just like cars. The comparison is not a false equivalency, at all. There are some differences you can poke at, for example the economic impact of banning cars would be catastrophic, guns not so much (unless it provoked a civil war; which it might). But cars also represent an important form of freedom for many people, as do guns, and the vast, vast majority of the use of both is legal and harmless.
The concern grew out of the aversion to accept the election results. Not out of any evidence of the collusion
You have any evidence for that claim?
What I see is that we do have evidence of multiple instances of Russian attempts to influence the election, both via influencing public opinion (e.g. DNC email hacks) and directly (e.g. hacking election machines), and we also evidence of multiple meetings between Trump campaign representatives, Trump associates and Trump political appointees with Russian officials, including several that Trump's team appears to have attempted to conceal. That's clearly enough to motivate a serious investigation.
All well and good - now somebody please tell me why fixing the ridiculously stupid loopholes in the background check laws would not meet all those criteria in a heartbeat ?
BTW, regarding the effectiveness of background checks: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us..., this morning's shooter passed Illinois' background checks. Yeah, he was suspected of earlier crimes, but those cases were dismissed, and we clearly don't want to go down the road of punishing people for merely being accused of a crime. That would be both wrong and unconstitutional even if there's a chance (not a guarantee, just a chance) that it would have prevented this morning's tragedy.
This is an extremely common story, too. The problem is that background checks are an attempt to figure out which people are likely to commit a crime in the future, based on what they've done in the past. That's an effort which is always going to be doomed to failure.
The evidence you sought you, yourself, provided.
'When the NRA tells its members'...
As opposed to real representative organisations where the members telk the org what to do.
Now you're just being silly.
The members do tell the organization what to do in general terms, like "fight against gun control". The NRA does this by employing staff[1] to keep track of specific legislative proposals, rate representatives and candidates on gun-friendliness, etc., and when it finds a situation where the members' political weight can be brought to bear, it notifies the members and tells them about the situation and asks them to act. The members act because they agree with the NRA's position and request.
If you believe that somehow the NRA makes its members do its bidding against their own will, what mechanism does it use to coerce them?
[1] It's also worth pointing out that the NRA's political section is a small minority of its total staff. Most of the NRA's employees work on its primary mission, which is to facilitate and encourage firearms training, especially gun safety training. The political arm is a relatively recent and fairly small addition.
I think the problem is they're not eating their own dog food. When Clinton was thought to be winning, Obama's administration was even saying we should accept the election results. Then when the DNC lost, turns out they only meant that if they won.
I don't see any calls by the Democratic party, or Obama, or Clinton, or anyone else, to set aside the election results. There is concern that maybe Trump's campaign illegally colluded with the Russians. If that's the case, the lawbreakers should be identified and prosecuted, but I don't think anyone serious would actually call for setting aside the election results. There's nothing in the constitution that allows that or says what to do about it if it's done. In the event that evidence were found to prove that Trump, personally, was involved, then he should be impeached and tried for it, and Pence would step into the presidency. If Pence were also found to be guilty, then Orrin Hatch would be president, and so on down the line until we found a member of the line of succession that wasn't involved in this hypothetical massive conspiracy.
And if it turns out that no one in Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians, but the Russians changed the outcome of the election all on their own, then the obvious response is diplomatic sanctions against the Russians and an overhaul of our election infrastructure to make sure it can't be done again. But the election is done, the results are final, Trump is president until Jan 2021, barring death, resignation or impeachment and subsequent removal by the Senate.
All well and good - now somebody please tell me why fixing the ridiculously stupid loopholes in the background check laws would not meet all those criteria in a heartbeat ?
You have to start by analyzing whether or not background check requirements themselves are constitutional. Courts haven't reviewed this, but I think there are legitimate questions that arise mostly from the lack of evidence that background checks actually accomplish anything useful. "Effectiveness" isn't actually part of the strict scrutiny requirements, but it's implied by all three prongs of the tests.
Even if you grant that background check requirements are constitutional, the "ridiculously stupid loopholes" really aren't so much loopholes as avoiding imposing a fairly invasive requirement on individual gun owners. Right now, background checks are not required on inter-personal transfers of guns. So I can give a gun to my son, sell a gun to my neighbor, or someone I meet at a gun show, etc. (as long as the person is a resident of my state).
Requiring a background check for private transfers would mean that almost every change of ownership of a gun would require both parties to go to an FFL (Federal Fireams Licensee; a dealer) and do the transfer through them, for a fee. That's pretty onerous in many circumstances (though it would create a booming business for FFLs), especially since in the vast majority of cases it would accomplish exactly nothing.
One variant (which I've never heard proposed) that would significantly reduce the invasiveness is some sort of "personal knowledge" exception, which would allow the check to be skipped in cases where the transferror has extensive personal knowledge of the transferee (say, 5+ years) and no reason to believe the transferee is restricted. This would make most classified ad sales, gun show sales, etc., subject to background checks, but that wouldn't be much of a problem. All gun shows have a large number of FFLs present who would be happy to do the transfer for a trivial fee (with so many co-located, price competition would be fierce). In the case of classified ad sales, most people prefer to meet at some public, neutral location to do the transfer anyway (you're meeting a stranger with a gun), and doing it at a gun store would be quite reasonable. Also, an exception could be included for cases where the transferee can provide reasonable proof of non-restricted status. For example, if the transferee is a concealed weapons permit holder, that means that the state has already done a background check.
Actually, many gun owners I know refuse as a matter of principle to sell a gun to anyone they don't know well unless that person has a concealed weapon permit, for exactly the reason that they don't want to sell to felons or drug users. I'd probably adopt that attitude myself, except that I don't sell guns. I just buy them:-)
Note that the NRA would probably not agree with my proposal for universal background checks with reasonable exceptions, unless it also included a clause requiring FFLs to destroy records of such transactions. This is because part of the objection to background checks is the concern that they establish a paper trail that could be used for future confiscation. I don't think that objection has any constitutional merit, though, since it presumes a future confiscation law, which would itself almost certainly be unconstitutional.
That issue points out the even bigger problem with universal background check laws, which has nothing to do with the constitution: At present the US does not have the political will to pass them. Lots of Americans think it's a good idea in the abstract, but don't really care very much about it. A minority of Americans care about it a lot and will punish any lawmakers who try to enact such laws. The net is insufficient political support for enacting universal background check requirements. Until there's real interest in passing the laws, constitutionality is moot.
>This is a common misconception. The NRA is overwhelmingly funded by individual members, not by gun manufacturers. They publicly report their accounts; you can look it up.
I spoke of who they represent, I said nothing about who funds them.
These are USUALLY correlated things, but not inevitably so - and the NRA is a perfect example of an organisation where no such correlation exists.
No, it isn't. The NRA primarily serves the interests of its members. Show me some evidence to the contrary.
Besides which, they really have incredibly outsized political power - the entire NRA has less members than Planet fitness does !
This is the best counter to your argument above. Why does the NRA have outsized political power? Because its members strongly support its positions, because those are their positions. When the NRA calls on its members to make calls and write letters to their representatives, they do so, en masse, because its positions are aligned with theirs. And if that doesn't work, when the NRA calls on its members to vote out anti-gun politicians, they do that, too. In most of the country elections are close enough that the NRA membership can swing it, and in the redder parts of the country, the NRA membership outright decides the results.
If the NRA didn't so closely align with its individual members, the only political clout it would wield is financial, and while it has money (thanks to its individual members), the actual cash it has to spend is pretty small potatoes compared to most lobbying organizations. It's the millions of call-making, letter-writing and vote-casting members that provide its political power.
>clean it would leave significant radioactive residue which would fall afoul of anti-pollution laws
And sooner or later somebody would pass through the area, no matter how remote it is, and get killed. I never said you would kill the innocent bystander right away.
Radioactive residue isn't so deadly that merely passing through will kill people, in most cases. And if the bombs were used on private land so that no one could pass through without trespassing, they're not "innocent bystanders". If you trespass in lots of sort so mining, industrial and construction zones, you may well die because of the hazards there, but assuming it's well-marked, there's no one to blame but yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't email like a post card that anyone can read in transit?
Most email servers connect to each other via an encrypted channel. So the emails aren't in plain text whilst in transit.
Unfortunately it's really not "most email servers", but only "some email servers". Most all of the big ones do use SSMTP, though, so most email is transferred via an encrypted channel.
Gmail is great in terms of reliability, spam filtering (best I've found), and features. But if you're looking for privacy, the only company that's probably worse in my mind is Facebook.
What do you mean, specifically, by privacy?
If you want to keep your family, friends, neighbors, etc. out of your email, then Gmail is great. Security is excellent, especially if you enable two-factor.
If you want to keep random hackers out of your email, then Gmail is great. Security is excellent, especially if you enable two-factor.
If you want to keep your ISP out of your email, then Gmail is great. It uses TLS connections for all client communications, and also with whatever other email servers it talks to that support it. Gmail-to-gmail communications is definitely encrypted all the time, both in transit and in storage.
If you want to keep the FBI/Police out of your email, then Gmail is as good as any US-based email provider can be. They all have to provide data in response to proper subpoenas and warrants, and Google's lawyers scrutinize requests carefully.
If you want to keep the NSA out of your email, then it's hard to say, but I suspect Gmail is quite good. Snowden revealed that the NSA was tapping Google's internal fiber, but Google has since moved to comprehensive point-to-point encryption. It's not completely impossible that the NSA has compromised the key management system that enables that, but it's actually pretty unlikely. I would assert that on this measure Gmail is as good as any large US-based email provider can be. Smaller ones may slide by the NSA because they're not interesting... but if they do become interesting they'll almost certainly be easier to pop than Google is.
(As an aside: If the NSA is targeting you specifically for surveillance, as opposed to just sweeping you up in the dragnet, you should just give up on electronic communications entirely.)
If you want to keep Google's advertising profile analytics software out of your email, then Gmail is awful. Your email will be scanned by systems that try to work out what you might be interested in buying, and this data will be correlated with web searches (if you don't have web history disabled), and data from other Google products. The resulting information will be used by Google (not by advertisers; they don't get access to the treasure trove) to show you ads for things you might want to buy, instead of things that you almost certainly don't want to buy.
One space or two after a period?
Sorry wrong crowd :P
(and don't you heathens dare say one)
The correct answer depends on the font. With monospaced fonts, two spaces after a period. With proportional fonts, it's up to the rendering system to recognize the end of the sentence and render the single space after a period as an em space. A good rendering system should recognize periods in abbreviations, and use a smaller space. But few do, so we just live with the egregiously large space in the middle of "Mr. Green".
Yeah, my hunch is in a true survey of all programmers, it's the tab-users who make more money. Tabs are a relic from the old typewriter days, so older programmers are more likely to use them. And older programs tend to make more money.
It's the other way around. Old programmers worked on systems where the size of a tab was fixed at 8 spaces and could not be changed. Since 8-space indentation is way too much, they used either a mix of tabs and spaces to get the right indentation level, or spaces only. And then when we all started to get editors with configurable tab sizes, the mixed solution resulted in an unholy mess which was most easily fixed by standardizing on spaces only.
And old programmers tend to make more money, so money is correlated with spaces-only indentation.
This ensures that for everyone, they will both see it how they want it to look AND the code won't get misaligned in these circumstances.
And it ensures that for those who use proper 8-space tabs indentation gets shoved way to the right. Which is also what happens when the code is cat'ed on a terminal, looked at in a diff program, etc., unless you configure tabs to be smaller in all of those other contexts... and then other things that expect tabs to have the correct size get broken.
No, spaces only is the best overall answer.
Intelligent devs use IDEs that handle all this formatting nonsense for them, removing the entire argument in the first place and just get things done
I see you're a novice programmer.
IDEs do not solve this problem; they just hide it, in a way that arguably makes it worse. I made your same argument 25 years ago, saying that decent editors (like EMACS, still my editor of choice) handle all that nonsense, removing the entire argument. So, I had EMACS configured to use an optimal mix of (proper 8-space) tabs and spaces, and life was good.
Then others had to edit my code, and they cursed me, because they used tabs only, and set their tab width to the indentation level, and my code was all misaligned in their editor, and hard to read. So they "fixed" my code, and life was good.
Then others had to edit their code, and they also used tabs only, but set their tab width to a different preferred indentation level; and lots of carefully aligned code became misaligned, and hard to read. So they fixed the code to use a correct number of tabs for indentation levels, and then spaces after that for alignment (which is how their editors/IDEs were configured).
And then the code came back to me, and although the alignment was fine, my 8-space tabs pushed much of the code way to the right. So then I told my editor to reformat and replace all the tabs with appropriate numbers of spaces....
And it looked right in everyone's editors, IDEs, and when printed, and cat'ed, and everything else. It did mean that people couldn't easily use different indentation levels, but that's a small price to pay.
So... the right answer is spaces. Which is what all the old hands have learned. And old hands make more money than young novices. So this finding of correlation between salary and using only spaces makes perfect sense.
However, I've since moved on to another approach to code formatting: I do not format code. I write a configuration file for a code formatter (I'm really liking clang-format lately), and I check it in with the code, and I add a commit hook that runs all code through the formatter, with the specified config, and rejects the commit if the output of the code does not match the input.
Use whatever tool you want to edit, but you have to run the formatter before you can commit. If you're an intelligent developer, then, what you'll do is bind the formatter to a hotkey in your editor/IDE and never worry about formatting at all. I almost never hit the return key while typing code, and don't bother much with spaces or at all with tabs. I type stream-of-consciousness, format-free code, then hit the formatter hotkey.
You need to re-read the post you replied to.
I'll check out Amazon's offering, but I'm used to Google Music which *isn't* hit or miss. It just has, to a first approximation, All The Music. There used to be a handful of major exceptions (Beatles, Metallica, etc.), but those gaps have been closed.
People keep saying that conservatives and "right wingers" are rioting or trying to silence the left... Where?
I wasn't addressing that question, but if you want my opinion on it, here it is: I think both sides often try to silence the other. I think the left is more aggressive about it, because the left is more convinced of their own moral rightness. That makes sense, since the conservative viewpoint is less about seeking moral rightness and more about not upsetting the apple cart (there are areas in which the parties reverse, though). So the left, who believes they're focused on using the government to right past injustice, feels justified in being aggressive because their opponents clearly want to preserver injustice and are therefore bad.
It's instructive to look at the areas where the attitudes reverse. Take abortion. Pro-life Republicans do feel like that is an intensely moral issue, and although it's died down a bit in recent years, it wasn't so long ago that large groups of them physically blocked access to abortion clinics, and extremist individuals went so far as to murder doctors who performed abortions. Meanwhile, Republican legislators used their power to attempt to silence information about abortion, or to force it to be delivered only in a context that painted it in a bad light.
Of course, that saying is almost exclusively used sarcastically and intended as an insult, which makes it even harder to determine if there is racist intent. It is almost never used as an actual compliment.
Interesting. Your experience differs from mine.
What use does a gun have except for killing?
The primary non-injurious use is target shooting, and that is what most of my guns are for. Many of them really wouldn't do anything else very well; they're designed for target shooting. Guns designed for self-defense are an interesting case; they're designed for killing/injuring people, but almost none of them will ever be used for that purpose. The only civilian-owned guns that really are used for killing are hunting weapons, and design follows purpose.
It's less regulated than an automobile
I disagree. You don't have to pass a background check to purchase an automobile. You do have to pass a certification in order to drive it on public roads, but not to purchase it, and not to drive it on private property. In fact, nearly all of the regulation of automobiles isn't of automobiles themselves, but related to requirements that have to be met to operated them on public roads. The equivalent for a gun is the right to carry a gun in public, which most states in the US do restrict, requiring training and background checks.
One way in which vehicles are more regulated is the fact that they have titles, and ownership is tracked. That's because of their value, though, rather than any other reason. Real estate is titled and ownership tracked for the same reason.
Most of mine have never killed anything
Yeah I too buy mine just so I can sit there and stroke them erotically.
I don't get this hoplo-erotic fascination that so many non-gunowners seem to have. I don't know anyone who actually owns guns that sees them in anything like that twisted way. They're fine pieces of machinery, some of them are works of art, many of them have sentimental value, they are tools for specific purposes... there are a lot of ways in which they're valued, some deeply emotional, but none of them remotely sexual.
For example, my favorite rifle is a fine machine, a work of art and has deep sentimental value, as well as being an excellent tool for killing big game. It's a 7mm Remington Magnum (an excellent caliber for elk, moose, bear; a little heavy for mule deer, but not too bad) that was made by my father in law. It started life as an Argentine Mauser M98 which my dad in law rechambered to 7mm. He tuned and polished the action and trigger to an incredible degree of smoothness and accuracy, and blued and polished the barrel and receiver to a beautiful high gloss. Then he handcrafted and fitted a stock of elegant birdseye maple, with polished ebony forearm and grip caps. He also elaborately hand-tooled the leather sling. The result is a breathtaking work of art (the photo doesn't do it justice) and also an incredibly smooth and accurate weapon... and it's the best memento I have of my father in law, a great man who I learned to love and appreciate deeply over the course of the almost 30 years I've known my wife. I also treasure his slide rule, but the rifle has so much more of him invested into it.
In contrast, my daily carry gun is just a tool, with no more emotion connected to it than my keys or my wallet, or my phone. Actually, I'm probably more attached to my phone. I like the gun because it's small and easily-concealable, and because it's surprisingly accurate in spite of its extremely short barrel. I can consistently hit a two-inch square from 25 feet; not anything I'd want to use in a target competition, but more than adequate for the purpose.
Various other guns have various meanings; there's my first gun, a single-shot .22LR rifle that I got when I was 12 and which I've used to teach all of my kids to shoot. My shotgun has lots of fond memories associated with it, of hunting birds with my sons, and my old bird dog (who died a couple of years ago). My old carry gun has some, because it was the gun I used to learn to shoot handguns well, and it was the one I used at at a pistol marksmanship course that I took with my dad... the first time I've ever out-shot him, an event that really brought home that he's getting old.
Actually, all of the emotional attachment I have to various guns is really just imprinted emotion from family interaction, and nothing remotely sexual in any of it (maybe if my wife were interested in guns...). Cars, on the other hand, some things have happened in various vehicles I've owned that give my thoughts about them some erotic overtones.
I'll be shocked if you actually read past the first sentence of this post, though. You're not interested in learning about reality that contradicts your assumptions.
case in point: It was *my* fault I was upset at her for cheating on me because if I hadn't checked her email I wouldn't have known.
I cannot imagine a more on-point and succinct description of BPD. That's exactly the sort of thing BPD sufferers do.
How did you handle it? How did you guide your child towards the help they needed or did you have to go with the "I'm your parent and I said so" route? because with BPDs forceful coercion doesn't really do squat (at least with adults).
Coercion, basically, and no, it didn't really accomplish much to help her get better. The main things it did were (a) keep her alive, because while she was institutionalized she was under a level of supervision that made killing herself all but impossible, a level of supervision that no parents could ever provide in a home setting and (b) force her to learn a set of tools that she could use to manage her BPD, if she chose to.
Even that was not remotely without cost. In fact, at one point it looked seriously possible that I might go to prison. We had her in a day treatment facility, and while there she convinced the therapist that her issues were all our fault, that we were verbally, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive (but that there were no marks because we were careful while she was in treatment and we were under scrutiny). She stopped just short of accusing me of sexual abuse, and actually did accuse her older brother, which led to some seriously unpleasant interactions with the police and child and family services. To this day I'm not sure why she didn't make the allegation against me; it would have been so easy for her. She's a very bright girl (woman, now), charming, personable and convincing, and she had that therapist wrapped around her finger.
The day treatment therapist believed her to the extent that he ordered us to put her into residential treatment. If we didn't, he'd write an affidavit for the police, attesting to all of our abuse. So, we put her in residential treatment. There, the therapist was wiser and she had less room for twisting the truth. The program she was in wasn't specific for BPD, it was structured for troubled teens generally, with a specific focus on substance abuse but with a recognition that substance abuse in kids is almost always a symptom as much as a problem itself. But it did include a pretty deep focus on identifying base truth and eliminating self-deception, and the therapist and staff were quite good at recognizing what was truth and what was not (calling on us as needed). The program also taught a lot of excellent strategies for self-management and even included a little bit of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, though not Dialectical Behavior Therapy (the variant of CBT that has proven most effective for BPD). The program taught, and she learned... but she didn't actually apply it until much later.
Here's another BPDism: when we put her in residential treatment, she was convinced that we had done it to "get rid of her". Never mind that the program required heavy parental and family involvement, to the point that we were at the facility seven days per week, and her treatment pretty much took over our entire lives (to the detriment of our other kids, unfortunately). Not to mention the money. Her facility was actually incredibly cheap as such things go, but it was still almost $10,000 per month. Luckily we had good insurance that covered most of it. When the massive commitment of time and resources we'd made was pointed out to her, she just argued that we only did that so we'd look good to family and neighbors. The level of brain-twisting required to follow BPD logic is enormous.
When she finally "graduated" from the treatment, after more than a year, she was actually quite improved, but still extremely hard to live with. Eventually, though, she tried to kill herself again and went back in. She was there a total of three times. By the third, they didn't keep her long because they re
That's completely irrelevant actually - indeed it's not even the purpose of background checks. The purpose of background checks is to let existing gun ownership laws actually be enforced - so that previously convicted felons (already prohibited), or dishonourably discharged serviceman cannot easily acquire a weapon they are prohibited from owning.
That just begs the question. Why do we have/need laws restricting some people from owning firearms for life? The only possible answer is to reduce violence. Personally, I think lifetime bans won't stand up to constitutional scrutiny, and are on morally questionable grounds as well. Temporary bans on the mentally ill are more justifiable, but also incredibly hard to implement in a fair and even-handed way, without deep invasion of lives and without creating the risk of deterring people who need help from seeking it, which could actually increase violence.
The point of fixing the background checks is much more simple than reducing gun violence: it's about the principle of the rule of law.
If that's the case, then we have a bigger problem: The existing background checks identify tens of thousands of illegal gun purchasers every year... and only a few hundred are prosecuted. If the problem is uneven application of the law, then you should really be up in arms over that.
Gun violence is an entirely different debate -- which should not be conflated.
So why bring up background checks in a discussion of gun violence? You should know that the vast majority of people who argue for universal background checks do believe that it is a way to reduce gun violence. That being the case, in the future you should probably make your very unusual perspective clear when you bring the issue up.
I certainly agree that background checks have basically no impact on gun violence and therefore don't meet the compelling government interest requirement of strict scrutiny. I said as much in the other post where laid out the constitutional analysis of universal checks. Your implied argument here is that they're necessary to ensure uniform application of another gun law (one that is itself constitutionally suspect), but mere uniform application clearly doesn't constitute a compelling government interest. If it did, then it would be constitutional to stop random people on the street to search them for drugs.
So, basically, you're arguing for rescinding the existing background check laws.
I have subscriptions to other things, but I feel like I get really great value out of those three. Music especially... before I tried it I said I'd never do subscription music. After I tried it, I'll never go back to buying individual songs or albums. Ad-free YouTube is a nice side-benefit.
I do feel like my Netflix subscription has decreased in value, though. It's now really only good for the original content (much of which is great). I almost never find any movies I want to watch.
I also need to look into the video/music features of the Amazon Prime subscription. I feel like I get great value just from the free shipping, so those are just bonuses.
Keep point to understand is that an ability to do "a little planning" and tendency to engage in mass murders is inversely correlated for individuals acting alone.
Cite?
It appears to me that most mass murderers do extensive planning. The fetishize it and dream about it for months, if not years. If you'd like, I can provide a long list of examples of this type. But I doubt you need me to.
Despite his denial, it is obvious from the quote that he was suggesting someone shoot his opponent for him.
It seemed to me he was actually suggesting that someone shoot the judges she might pick. Not that that's really any different.
The thing is, most of them don't want to. It's a cry for help./p>
Most of them who don't wan't to die choose a method that has a greater chance of being stopped, I think. I'm not a mental health professional, but I unfortunately have some direct experience.
I have a daughter who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, and like many BPD sufferers has tried many times to kill herself. For a few years there, we were at the ER at least three or four times per year, except when she was institutionalized. When she was institutionalized we also got the chance to be sometime-parents to a bunch of other girls with similar problems, and we became friends and have kept in touch since, so my experience is broader than just her.
I own many guns, and because of her disorder I've been careful to always keep them locked up... except one time. I'd been teaching a shooting class so I had a couple of .22 pistols in my truck, and I was in a hurry when I got home and didn't get them locked up right away. She took one, with the intention of killing herself with it (all previous attempts had been with pills). When I went out to get the guns I realized immediately what had happened and called the police (who knew her well). They, and we, began searching intensively for her.
When we found her, she had the gun, but had carefully unloaded it and thrown the ammunition into a swampy area. She told me that she had realized that she didn't actually want to die, and that if she used the gun no one would be able to intervene to keep her from dying.
I'm not going to claim that there aren't some people who kill themselves with a gun who wouldn't kill themselves if they didn't have a gun. But I think that most people who choose a gun choose it specifically because they aren't crying for help and really just want to end it. If they were crying for help, they'd do something more like what my daughter usually did: Take a bunch of pills then make sure she was with people who would notice and act to save her. Those who really want to die and don't have access to a gun can jump in front of a bus or a train, or off a tall building, or run a hose from their tailpipe when they're certain no one will be around all day, or any of a hundred other methods with just as high a probability of "success".
(Aside: My daughter is doing much better. It's been over three years since she attempted suicide. She still struggles with her disorder but is doing much better at building a life in spite of it. She sees a therapist weekly -- her own choice, which is important. We made her go to therapy for years, but it's dramatically less effective than when the person actually wants the help.)
Only if every auto accident is an argument to ban automobiles...
You're comparing an accident with a transportation device with an attempted homicide with a purpose built weapon. Automobiles have plenty of uses besides killing something. Firearms are purpose built weapons. Comparing the two is a false equivalency.
Guns also have plenty of uses besides killing something. Most of mine have never killed anything, and never will kill anything.
But I do own some guns that are clearly designed specifically for killing animals. And I even have some that are clearly designed specifically for injuring or killing people. They aren't for hunting, or target shooting -- they're too small, too low-powered and too inaccurate for those purposes. Yet, they will still never be used to harm anyone except in lawful defense of self or others. Their purpose is not in any way criminal.
Guns have lots of legitimate, non-criminal uses. Just like cars. The comparison is not a false equivalency, at all. There are some differences you can poke at, for example the economic impact of banning cars would be catastrophic, guns not so much (unless it provoked a civil war; which it might). But cars also represent an important form of freedom for many people, as do guns, and the vast, vast majority of the use of both is legal and harmless.
The concern grew out of the aversion to accept the election results. Not out of any evidence of the collusion
You have any evidence for that claim?
What I see is that we do have evidence of multiple instances of Russian attempts to influence the election, both via influencing public opinion (e.g. DNC email hacks) and directly (e.g. hacking election machines), and we also evidence of multiple meetings between Trump campaign representatives, Trump associates and Trump political appointees with Russian officials, including several that Trump's team appears to have attempted to conceal. That's clearly enough to motivate a serious investigation.
All well and good - now somebody please tell me why fixing the ridiculously stupid loopholes in the background check laws would not meet all those criteria in a heartbeat ?
BTW, regarding the effectiveness of background checks: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us..., this morning's shooter passed Illinois' background checks. Yeah, he was suspected of earlier crimes, but those cases were dismissed, and we clearly don't want to go down the road of punishing people for merely being accused of a crime. That would be both wrong and unconstitutional even if there's a chance (not a guarantee, just a chance) that it would have prevented this morning's tragedy.
This is an extremely common story, too. The problem is that background checks are an attempt to figure out which people are likely to commit a crime in the future, based on what they've done in the past. That's an effort which is always going to be doomed to failure.
The evidence you sought you, yourself, provided. 'When the NRA tells its members'... As opposed to real representative organisations where the members telk the org what to do.
Now you're just being silly.
The members do tell the organization what to do in general terms, like "fight against gun control". The NRA does this by employing staff[1] to keep track of specific legislative proposals, rate representatives and candidates on gun-friendliness, etc., and when it finds a situation where the members' political weight can be brought to bear, it notifies the members and tells them about the situation and asks them to act. The members act because they agree with the NRA's position and request.
If you believe that somehow the NRA makes its members do its bidding against their own will, what mechanism does it use to coerce them?
[1] It's also worth pointing out that the NRA's political section is a small minority of its total staff. Most of the NRA's employees work on its primary mission, which is to facilitate and encourage firearms training, especially gun safety training. The political arm is a relatively recent and fairly small addition.
I think the problem is they're not eating their own dog food. When Clinton was thought to be winning, Obama's administration was even saying we should accept the election results. Then when the DNC lost, turns out they only meant that if they won.
I don't see any calls by the Democratic party, or Obama, or Clinton, or anyone else, to set aside the election results. There is concern that maybe Trump's campaign illegally colluded with the Russians. If that's the case, the lawbreakers should be identified and prosecuted, but I don't think anyone serious would actually call for setting aside the election results. There's nothing in the constitution that allows that or says what to do about it if it's done. In the event that evidence were found to prove that Trump, personally, was involved, then he should be impeached and tried for it, and Pence would step into the presidency. If Pence were also found to be guilty, then Orrin Hatch would be president, and so on down the line until we found a member of the line of succession that wasn't involved in this hypothetical massive conspiracy.
And if it turns out that no one in Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians, but the Russians changed the outcome of the election all on their own, then the obvious response is diplomatic sanctions against the Russians and an overhaul of our election infrastructure to make sure it can't be done again. But the election is done, the results are final, Trump is president until Jan 2021, barring death, resignation or impeachment and subsequent removal by the Senate.
All well and good - now somebody please tell me why fixing the ridiculously stupid loopholes in the background check laws would not meet all those criteria in a heartbeat ?
You have to start by analyzing whether or not background check requirements themselves are constitutional. Courts haven't reviewed this, but I think there are legitimate questions that arise mostly from the lack of evidence that background checks actually accomplish anything useful. "Effectiveness" isn't actually part of the strict scrutiny requirements, but it's implied by all three prongs of the tests.
Even if you grant that background check requirements are constitutional, the "ridiculously stupid loopholes" really aren't so much loopholes as avoiding imposing a fairly invasive requirement on individual gun owners. Right now, background checks are not required on inter-personal transfers of guns. So I can give a gun to my son, sell a gun to my neighbor, or someone I meet at a gun show, etc. (as long as the person is a resident of my state).
Requiring a background check for private transfers would mean that almost every change of ownership of a gun would require both parties to go to an FFL (Federal Fireams Licensee; a dealer) and do the transfer through them, for a fee. That's pretty onerous in many circumstances (though it would create a booming business for FFLs), especially since in the vast majority of cases it would accomplish exactly nothing.
One variant (which I've never heard proposed) that would significantly reduce the invasiveness is some sort of "personal knowledge" exception, which would allow the check to be skipped in cases where the transferror has extensive personal knowledge of the transferee (say, 5+ years) and no reason to believe the transferee is restricted. This would make most classified ad sales, gun show sales, etc., subject to background checks, but that wouldn't be much of a problem. All gun shows have a large number of FFLs present who would be happy to do the transfer for a trivial fee (with so many co-located, price competition would be fierce). In the case of classified ad sales, most people prefer to meet at some public, neutral location to do the transfer anyway (you're meeting a stranger with a gun), and doing it at a gun store would be quite reasonable. Also, an exception could be included for cases where the transferee can provide reasonable proof of non-restricted status. For example, if the transferee is a concealed weapons permit holder, that means that the state has already done a background check.
Actually, many gun owners I know refuse as a matter of principle to sell a gun to anyone they don't know well unless that person has a concealed weapon permit, for exactly the reason that they don't want to sell to felons or drug users. I'd probably adopt that attitude myself, except that I don't sell guns. I just buy them :-)
Note that the NRA would probably not agree with my proposal for universal background checks with reasonable exceptions, unless it also included a clause requiring FFLs to destroy records of such transactions. This is because part of the objection to background checks is the concern that they establish a paper trail that could be used for future confiscation. I don't think that objection has any constitutional merit, though, since it presumes a future confiscation law, which would itself almost certainly be unconstitutional.
That issue points out the even bigger problem with universal background check laws, which has nothing to do with the constitution: At present the US does not have the political will to pass them. Lots of Americans think it's a good idea in the abstract, but don't really care very much about it. A minority of Americans care about it a lot and will punish any lawmakers who try to enact such laws. The net is insufficient political support for enacting universal background check requirements. Until there's real interest in passing the laws, constitutionality is moot.
>This is a common misconception. The NRA is overwhelmingly funded by individual members, not by gun manufacturers. They publicly report their accounts; you can look it up. I spoke of who they represent, I said nothing about who funds them.
These are USUALLY correlated things, but not inevitably so - and the NRA is a perfect example of an organisation where no such correlation exists.
No, it isn't. The NRA primarily serves the interests of its members. Show me some evidence to the contrary.
Besides which, they really have incredibly outsized political power - the entire NRA has less members than Planet fitness does !
This is the best counter to your argument above. Why does the NRA have outsized political power? Because its members strongly support its positions, because those are their positions. When the NRA calls on its members to make calls and write letters to their representatives, they do so, en masse, because its positions are aligned with theirs. And if that doesn't work, when the NRA calls on its members to vote out anti-gun politicians, they do that, too. In most of the country elections are close enough that the NRA membership can swing it, and in the redder parts of the country, the NRA membership outright decides the results.
If the NRA didn't so closely align with its individual members, the only political clout it would wield is financial, and while it has money (thanks to its individual members), the actual cash it has to spend is pretty small potatoes compared to most lobbying organizations. It's the millions of call-making, letter-writing and vote-casting members that provide its political power.
>clean it would leave significant radioactive residue which would fall afoul of anti-pollution laws And sooner or later somebody would pass through the area, no matter how remote it is, and get killed. I never said you would kill the innocent bystander right away.
Radioactive residue isn't so deadly that merely passing through will kill people, in most cases. And if the bombs were used on private land so that no one could pass through without trespassing, they're not "innocent bystanders". If you trespass in lots of sort so mining, industrial and construction zones, you may well die because of the hazards there, but assuming it's well-marked, there's no one to blame but yourself.