Um... Trump took donations pretty quickly when he started running and he is getting in trouble for using that to pay for his other stuff as well from what I hear just like how he is in trouble using his charity as a slush fund.
No. He tried to close down that charity long before his campaign picked up. Because he was in a long-standing beef with the (now resigned in disgrace) NY AG, he had to keep it and its books open pending some movement in the case. It sat for two years. The AG had to resign, and one of his minions decided, for obviously political reasons, to pick it up and announce it as a distraction on the same day that the DoG IG's report came out.
Regardless, the foundation's bottom line is clear: the took in less money than they ultimately doled out to charity recipients. The family funded the set-up and administration of the foundation, so that no contributed donor money ever went to pay to run it. But the foundation dished out (to charitable recipients that are all on the record, you can read it for yourself) more money than donors provided, and the family had to make up the difference, adding yet more money to the fund to meet those gifts.
Trump seems to be trying to get rid of regulations you want to keep while trying to keep the regulations you want to get rid of
On balance, no. I'm pretty happy with the regulations he's scrapping and the few he's altered/added. Also happy with the Obama-era executive one-man-pen-signing stuff that he's allowed to expire or undo. Those are things that should have been done legislatively or through proper regulatory channels, but Obama too often dealt with it unilaterally and with deliberately temporary mechanisms as a way to make trouble for his successor and the legislature. Nobody will miss that approach.
Unfortuntely the corporations own those who appoint the regulators
That's one of the reasons so many people voted for Trump. He slogged his way through a deadly primary process, and launched into his campaign on his own dime. And he's the one striking down more regulations than he's inflicting on you.
You already have that right. If a criminal seeks to deny you of that right, we already have substantial mechanisms in place to punish them. That same criminal could, with a twitch of the wrist while driving, run you down with a car, too. Or beat you to death, as happens wildly more often than any murder committed using a rifle of any kind, let alone ones that share cosmetic features with assault weapons.
Magazine limits? I suppose you're thinking that the murderer in Florida would have been less deadly while he casually took his time killing people for quite some time before eventually abandoning his gun and walking out of the school. Right? Right. Except he chose to use low-capacity magazines because they were easier to conceal than standard capacity mags. If you really think that forcing a law-abiding person who's suddenly gone crazy (you know, someone who was limited to only buying low-capacity magazines) will be significantly safer if they have to pause their shooting for literally 2 or 3 seconds while they pop in another magazine, then you have no idea what you're talking about. Meanwhile, the actual criminals who don't care in the least about your limits, will think that's hilarious anyway.
And, 21 to purchase a semi-auto? People have been buying them for over a century. Of course it used to be much easier - anybody could walk into a hardware store and buy them like they would an axe or a screwdriver. Then we had a serious increase in the murder rate (not counting the big spike during prohibition) that topped out in the 1980's. Since then, roughly a hundred million guns have been purchased by American owners (most of those are semi-automatic), but the murder rate has dropped to roughly half of what it was 30 years ago. Far more guns purchased, far fewer murders.
I'm damn dangerous. And there's nothing that you can do about that.
I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Why should I care if you're "dangerous?" Are you threatening me, or somebody else? If you're not, then - so what? EVERYBODY is dangerous, and have at their disposal virtually unlimited ways to kill lots of people, without even getting around to using firearms. Are you boasting about martial arts skills or something?
You wouldn't last a week in what's left of the neighborhood we used to love. It turns out that not believing in the guys who use machetes to kill people, and burn the cars and smash the windows of people who call in the cops... not believing in them doesn't make them go away. Glad you get to live in whatever nice gang-free gated community you're enjoying. Congrats! Our HOA ran out of money to keep paying the off-duty cops we had parking at the entrance to our neighborhood, and they refused to risk their lives getting out of their cars to deal with the guys who simply cut open every security fence we all paid to put up, week-in, week-out. The hood was just too perfect a cross-roads and enclave for MS-13 to operate from, and they won. What's interesting is that you know perfectly well this happens in spots all around the country, and you're the one lying when you pretend it doesn't because that fits your political narrative better, somehow.
I quite like the size of my penis so I don't need a gun
Wow, that's a powerful penis! When was the last time you had a bunch of MS-13 guys with machetes in your back yard? Is your giant penis armored, or what? It must be remarkable if you know it's capable of preserving your life when someone's willing to kill you with actual weapons. Truly, amazing. Have you considered starring in a reality show of some sort? You'd make a fortune.
No, I only have a problem with totalitarian-minded types who know that shutting people up and stripping away their rights is the only way to forward their agenda. That you can't tell the difference between people who want to destroy rights and people who want to preserve them suggests that you really, REALLY should do anything dangerous to other people, like, say, voting.
So in other words, you don't like my tone, but of course agree on the substance. When all you've got is angry, vitriolic ad hominem, that pretty well covers it. Thanks for the vote of support! Your empathy, sympathy, respect and common decency are always on cowardly display - especially notable because you never, once, ever manage to constructively address the topic at hand. Thanks for being a consistent little obsessive - it's like clockwork.
then why is the NRA opposed to a waiting period so that a sufficient background check can be done?
Who said they are? They fully support a rich, deep background check through the NICS system, and want it to be even more thorough than it already is. A customer looking to make a purchase has to wait while that background check is completed. In most cases, that's only a matter of minutes... because, you know, we now have things like high-speed, integrated databases and banks of federal agents with access taking calls (a RECORD number of them, every month) as purchases are queued up. What the NRA is saying is that we need reporting agencies, shrinks, and other parties who may know prohibitive things about a prospective gun owner to GET ON THE RECORD in the NICS system so that the very well-oiled NICS check can show red flags that are currently slipping through the cracks. Waiting longer for data that isn't present in the system achieves nothing. Only holding lazy, non-cooperative, or under-funded agencies responsible for stepping up and getting that data into the system will further tighten things down. Something Republicans have passed bills to do, and which Democrats have blocked, as recently as this year.
And, of course, Obama-era policies like the one (still in place) that prevented the crazy, violent murderer in Florida from even having a local record in the first place are going to always be a problem. No background check - instant, or week-long, is going to prevent him from buying a rifle if his school, victims, and sheriff's office won't even go on the record to put him into the red-flag-reporting NICS system in the first place.
The question isn't "why is the NRA against waiting for a background check," but "why are so many liberal politicians against providing the data that would instantly flag a prohibited person?" Background checks against hundreds of databases aggregated into NICS take only moments. It's very comprehensive, but it breaks down (as would any background check - five minutes or five weeks) if a sheriff won't charge or report someone who's committed dozens of assaults. That instant background check won't work if the Air Force can't be bothered to report (as required by law) that a person who was recently discharged from the military was done so because of committing violent assault. NICS works well, and instantly - but it's GIGO. A slower process wouldn't prohibit someone if the needed data isn't there.
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people criminally attempting to purchase firearms while being prohibited from doing so are blocked by NICS checks. Guess how many times people attempting those purchases (all of which, by definition, involve lying on federal paperwork while in the process of attempting the purchase - a gimme federal felony conviction) have been prosecuted for those criminal attempts? Less than a dozen, in years. How many of those people who just tried to lie their way through a background check but were denied a firearm purchase then went on to acquire a weapon illegally by other means, instead of going to jail for that just-committed, demonstrable crime? Tens of thousands, at the very least. Again, this is an area where the NRA has been - year in, year out - begging federal officials to act. They have caught-red-handed evidence of criminals attempting to acquire weapons, and those guys just leave the dealer without consequence, and the NRA's lawyers and lobbyists have been pointing out those missed prosecution opportunities for years.
Well, since you took a moment to actually refute things in a calm, informative way, how can one argue with you? I do like the way that you've succinctly conveyed the research that explains how a tax aimed at just a few businesses with no clear plan or legal limitations in how or on what it will be spent will "fix homelessness." Thanks for your detailed analysis.
Oh, right, silly me. You just trotted out some lazy, childish ad hominem and thereby essentially conceded the point. Thanks!
We can ban assault weapons! Or at least make it hard for crazy people to get their hands on them!
Well, you're in luck! Assault weapons are already incredibly difficult to obtain unless you're willing to do so criminally. No assault weapon made after the 1980's can be sold in the US (unless it's to the government). And for those that are on the market, they cost many thousands of dollars if they're still functional, and buyers have to go through a lengthy and very expensive government tax/licensing process that includes a nearly proctological background check including multiple personal references and everything from banking info to employer interviews by BATFE feds. There's a reason that crimes committed by people using legally owned assault weapons are essentially non-existant.
Or are you talking about assault "style" rifles, that share some of the same cosmetic similarities as actual assault weapons? If so, then what you mean are "semi-automatic rifles," which of course have been available over the counter in this country for more than a century, and are the most common rifles in use. Untold millions of them. And yet, when it comes to murders, the FBI tells us that the number of people killed using a long gun of any kind is hugely eclipsed by the number of people who are beaten to death with bare hands, baseball bats, and fence posts. And of the tiny percentage that ARE killed using long guns, the vast majority of those are shotguns or simple little.22 rimfire rifles. The rifles that share cosmetic similarities to assault weapons are used in only a tiny fraction of such cases, and most of those involve illegally owned weapons anyway.
But sure, let's keep crazy people from getting those. The NRA completely agrees with you, and has been calling for 30 years for stricter compliance with the sort of reporting processes and record keeping that would actually help with that. The murderer in Florida who killed 17 had a long history of crazy behavior and violent assault. So why did he pass the background check? Because an Obama-era program aimed at protecting minority teenagers from the legal consequences for violent behavior kept him off the books despite dozens of acts that would immediately prevent you or I from ever being able to legally possess any kind of firearm, ever. The NRA has encouraged, and congressional Republicans have passed a bill that tightens up exactly such sort of slop, and would have also prevented the recent Texas killer from passing a background check despite his previous employer (the Air Force) knowing he was a violent nutjob. So, it's good to know that you're with the NRA on this topic. It's an important one, and they've been preaching about it for decades. The push-back on it is coming from Democrats, so you might want to take it up with them.
Right, because the NRA's purpose is to PREVENT YOU FROM TAKING OTHER PEOPLE'S CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED RIGHTS AWAY. Just like the ACLU tends to focus on things like your rights as protected by the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments (and, sometimes, the 2nd, too).
And since there are some very well funded groups trying to take away your civil rights, the NRA needs to spend money to push back against that never ending attack. Hogg and company, on the other hand, are seeking money and political power in order to strip away your rights. See the difference? Don't pretend you don't.
Hogg didn't get shot at, but he sure is happy to exploit the fact that other people were in order to collect $ and logistical support from people like Soros as he goes out to gin up partisan fund raising and votes. Hogg and his types couldn't be more thrilled when a crazy person murders people, because they love a good emotional lever to use when trying to strip away ever more civil liberties.
Another vector for sponsored activists like Hogg to try to muster up reputation-trashing campaigns against businesses that insufficiently provide money and public support to the Chosen Virtue Signaling Marching Orders Issue Of The Day.
Why not fix it? Because the politicians don't know how to.
No, that's not it. It's not complicated. "Fixing" it would mean actually recognizing that people who own and operate successful businesses aren't evil villains that should be torn down through taxes in order to subsidize (rather than fix) the problems that plague the cities in which they operate. They don't want to fix a bill like that (in the sense that rational people would consider it fixed). They think the bill didn't go far enough. So any movement the opposite direction is just caving in to Eeeeeevil Capitalists who should be treated like revenue dairy cows to throw some day-to-day cash at the social paradise of tent cities and rampant drug abuse.
What they don't know how to do is to sufficiently hide what they're trying to do, so that the lawyers at Amazon can't see they're about to be punitively taxed for the sin of being successful and employing thousands and thousands of people.
Yes, I understand that you want people you don't like to die. That's standard issue progressive world view stuff, of course. You'd rather see people killed by organized criminals trafficking in opioids than confront those criminals if they happen to be from another country, because you're a childish, craven fool who thinks you'll score more pandering points inside your preferred echo chamber if you signal your compassionate virtue with regard to repeat felons in the country illegally. I get it. Carry on! You're the best possible thing to help keep progressive politicians from running the entire country, because your death-wish politics is toxic to normal people. So, more, please! Be MORE shrill! Tell people who aren't racists that they're racists - they love that! It makes them want to vote they way you demand, every time.
I know, you think that teachers getting death threats and giving up reporting to work, students being murdered for not joining the gang, and police unable to get anyone to work with them against the gang because all of the witnesses take the MS-13 death threats seriously... you consider that to be just a bunch of scared suburbanites.
So, do tell. If your tires were slashed and your kid came home from school telling you that MS-13 has told them they'll either help them or be killed (and your local news has lots of coverage of MS-13 leaving butchered bodies lying around in local parks, or burning in their cars in local parking lots) - you'd consider that to be just some friendly cultural exchange, perhaps? Have you ever walked out your front door to find three guys covered in MS-13 tattoos on your front porch staring you in the face, and telling you that anyone who calls the cops in your neighborhood will get their heart ripped out? Followed by you reading in your morning paper about another local resident who actually had their heart ripped out? It would be lovely to hear your plan for dealing with that at your kid's school and on your own street.
Let me guess, you'd call the cops. Nope! The police tell you, in so many words, that the don't have enough people available to safely patrol your neighborhood that evening, because of threats to the officers' lives. But please, phone in a report, and they'll pass it along to the gang task force for their meeting next month.
Your fantasy world, where this isn't actually happening, and where liberal politicians aren't promising MS-13 sanctuary so they don't have to hear someone like you calling them a racist, is... delusional. It's real. I've personally lived it. I've watched our Salvadoran neighbor discover their dog, sliced into pieces, on their front porch, along with MS-13 tags spray painted on their front door (why? because their kid wouldn't join up at the local school, and had since gone off to live with relatives in order to save his life). Ever walked out the back door of your house, for a nice stroll in the community green space, only to find that your friendly local gang franchise was running a dog fighting ring there that morning, and approaching you with machetes for stopping to look, and reaching for your phone? No? Haven't had to spend an evening looking at MS-13 mug shots to try to identify the four guys that killed the local neighborhood handyman because he wouldn't be a drug mule?
I know, you'd go all Rambo on that crew. Heck, there's only an estimated couple hundred of them living within a few square miles of your front door, so you couldn't definitely take them all out, right? Or would that be you being a racist? No, you're not a racist. You're just an uninformed idiot who prefers murderous gang members over your fellow citizens because you feel more virtuous in SJW mode, defending them - because you agree with Nancy Pelosi. MS-13 members exhibit a "spark of the devine," and shouldn't be acted against. It's mean.
Really? You think "MS-13" is a race? You're everything that's wrong with contemporary public discourse. But please, keep it up! Do it even louder! That's what cost you the 2016 election, and the more the merrier.
MS-13 "taking over schools" is Fox agitprop. Stop repeating "faux news" for the stupid.
We had to move out of a neighborhood that was being overrun by MS-13. The police would no longer even enter our street without multiple vehicles. Moms from Central America started taking out second mortgages to get their kids out of the MS-13 recruiting ground and local franchise HQ that was the area's high school, and put them in private schools. Your witless, low-information attempt to blame that reality on Fox would be hilarious to me, if we hadn't had MS-13's local troops relive us of property, threaten our lives, and run our best neighbors out of their homes. You know all of this, but are trying to wish it away because it doesn't suit your personal political narrative. Stop it.
Homeless people -- what do you propose as a solution?
There are more jobs available than there are people to fill them. There's a reason that people congregate in places like Seattle and San Francisco to camp out and set up tent cities. Because those cities encourage it, practically and culturally and financially. You also know this, but are equally annoyed on that front, because it would mean confronting the reality of which sort of monolithic partisan political establishment totally controls places where that happens.
American cities really need to stop catering to companies that aren't willing to lift a finger to help local quality of life.
No, American voters need to stop giving power and resources to municipal politicians that seem to be doing everything possible to destroy the local quality of life (say, by making their city irresistible and consequence-free to squatters camping and shitting in people's front yards, MS-13 getting sanctuary while taking over local schools, etc). The pressure to reverse idiotic moves like the now-dead Seattle plan was as much from regular Seattle residents sick to death of the city's deliberate infliction of problems like that on them. That the city was looking to fund even more of it by milking some of the town's bigger employers shows how much they were trying to avoid confronting their own absurd policies, which caused the problem in the first place.
So what you're saying is that the waste management companies should charge more, and presumably, write bigger checks to... you, I guess? Amazon isn't a waste management company.
And, the word you're looking for there is "nowadays." Or, "these days" would also have worked.
Also, you could consider, just for fun, correctly processing a little humor deployed when you're opining about who has or needs which higher education degrees and the don't handle the plural form correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
Um... Trump took donations pretty quickly when he started running and he is getting in trouble for using that to pay for his other stuff as well from what I hear just like how he is in trouble using his charity as a slush fund.
No. He tried to close down that charity long before his campaign picked up. Because he was in a long-standing beef with the (now resigned in disgrace) NY AG, he had to keep it and its books open pending some movement in the case. It sat for two years. The AG had to resign, and one of his minions decided, for obviously political reasons, to pick it up and announce it as a distraction on the same day that the DoG IG's report came out.
Regardless, the foundation's bottom line is clear: the took in less money than they ultimately doled out to charity recipients. The family funded the set-up and administration of the foundation, so that no contributed donor money ever went to pay to run it. But the foundation dished out (to charitable recipients that are all on the record, you can read it for yourself) more money than donors provided, and the family had to make up the difference, adding yet more money to the fund to meet those gifts.
Trump seems to be trying to get rid of regulations you want to keep while trying to keep the regulations you want to get rid of
On balance, no. I'm pretty happy with the regulations he's scrapping and the few he's altered/added. Also happy with the Obama-era executive one-man-pen-signing stuff that he's allowed to expire or undo. Those are things that should have been done legislatively or through proper regulatory channels, but Obama too often dealt with it unilaterally and with deliberately temporary mechanisms as a way to make trouble for his successor and the legislature. Nobody will miss that approach.
Unfortuntely the corporations own those who appoint the regulators
That's one of the reasons so many people voted for Trump. He slogged his way through a deadly primary process, and launched into his campaign on his own dime. And he's the one striking down more regulations than he's inflicting on you.
I vote to preserve my right to live, thank you.
You already have that right. If a criminal seeks to deny you of that right, we already have substantial mechanisms in place to punish them. That same criminal could, with a twitch of the wrist while driving, run you down with a car, too. Or beat you to death, as happens wildly more often than any murder committed using a rifle of any kind, let alone ones that share cosmetic features with assault weapons.
Magazine limits? I suppose you're thinking that the murderer in Florida would have been less deadly while he casually took his time killing people for quite some time before eventually abandoning his gun and walking out of the school. Right? Right. Except he chose to use low-capacity magazines because they were easier to conceal than standard capacity mags. If you really think that forcing a law-abiding person who's suddenly gone crazy (you know, someone who was limited to only buying low-capacity magazines) will be significantly safer if they have to pause their shooting for literally 2 or 3 seconds while they pop in another magazine, then you have no idea what you're talking about. Meanwhile, the actual criminals who don't care in the least about your limits, will think that's hilarious anyway.
And, 21 to purchase a semi-auto? People have been buying them for over a century. Of course it used to be much easier - anybody could walk into a hardware store and buy them like they would an axe or a screwdriver. Then we had a serious increase in the murder rate (not counting the big spike during prohibition) that topped out in the 1980's. Since then, roughly a hundred million guns have been purchased by American owners (most of those are semi-automatic), but the murder rate has dropped to roughly half of what it was 30 years ago. Far more guns purchased, far fewer murders.
I'm damn dangerous. And there's nothing that you can do about that.
I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Why should I care if you're "dangerous?" Are you threatening me, or somebody else? If you're not, then - so what? EVERYBODY is dangerous, and have at their disposal virtually unlimited ways to kill lots of people, without even getting around to using firearms. Are you boasting about martial arts skills or something?
I don't believe you. You are lying.
You wouldn't last a week in what's left of the neighborhood we used to love. It turns out that not believing in the guys who use machetes to kill people, and burn the cars and smash the windows of people who call in the cops ... not believing in them doesn't make them go away. Glad you get to live in whatever nice gang-free gated community you're enjoying. Congrats! Our HOA ran out of money to keep paying the off-duty cops we had parking at the entrance to our neighborhood, and they refused to risk their lives getting out of their cars to deal with the guys who simply cut open every security fence we all paid to put up, week-in, week-out. The hood was just too perfect a cross-roads and enclave for MS-13 to operate from, and they won. What's interesting is that you know perfectly well this happens in spots all around the country, and you're the one lying when you pretend it doesn't because that fits your political narrative better, somehow.
I quite like the size of my penis so I don't need a gun
Wow, that's a powerful penis! When was the last time you had a bunch of MS-13 guys with machetes in your back yard? Is your giant penis armored, or what? It must be remarkable if you know it's capable of preserving your life when someone's willing to kill you with actual weapons. Truly, amazing. Have you considered starring in a reality show of some sort? You'd make a fortune.
No, I only have a problem with totalitarian-minded types who know that shutting people up and stripping away their rights is the only way to forward their agenda. That you can't tell the difference between people who want to destroy rights and people who want to preserve them suggests that you really, REALLY should do anything dangerous to other people, like, say, voting.
So in other words, you don't like my tone, but of course agree on the substance. When all you've got is angry, vitriolic ad hominem, that pretty well covers it. Thanks for the vote of support! Your empathy, sympathy, respect and common decency are always on cowardly display - especially notable because you never, once, ever manage to constructively address the topic at hand. Thanks for being a consistent little obsessive - it's like clockwork.
then why is the NRA opposed to a waiting period so that a sufficient background check can be done?
Who said they are? They fully support a rich, deep background check through the NICS system, and want it to be even more thorough than it already is. A customer looking to make a purchase has to wait while that background check is completed. In most cases, that's only a matter of minutes ... because, you know, we now have things like high-speed, integrated databases and banks of federal agents with access taking calls (a RECORD number of them, every month) as purchases are queued up. What the NRA is saying is that we need reporting agencies, shrinks, and other parties who may know prohibitive things about a prospective gun owner to GET ON THE RECORD in the NICS system so that the very well-oiled NICS check can show red flags that are currently slipping through the cracks. Waiting longer for data that isn't present in the system achieves nothing. Only holding lazy, non-cooperative, or under-funded agencies responsible for stepping up and getting that data into the system will further tighten things down. Something Republicans have passed bills to do, and which Democrats have blocked, as recently as this year.
And, of course, Obama-era policies like the one (still in place) that prevented the crazy, violent murderer in Florida from even having a local record in the first place are going to always be a problem. No background check - instant, or week-long, is going to prevent him from buying a rifle if his school, victims, and sheriff's office won't even go on the record to put him into the red-flag-reporting NICS system in the first place.
The question isn't "why is the NRA against waiting for a background check," but "why are so many liberal politicians against providing the data that would instantly flag a prohibited person?" Background checks against hundreds of databases aggregated into NICS take only moments. It's very comprehensive, but it breaks down (as would any background check - five minutes or five weeks) if a sheriff won't charge or report someone who's committed dozens of assaults. That instant background check won't work if the Air Force can't be bothered to report (as required by law) that a person who was recently discharged from the military was done so because of committing violent assault. NICS works well, and instantly - but it's GIGO. A slower process wouldn't prohibit someone if the needed data isn't there.
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people criminally attempting to purchase firearms while being prohibited from doing so are blocked by NICS checks. Guess how many times people attempting those purchases (all of which, by definition, involve lying on federal paperwork while in the process of attempting the purchase - a gimme federal felony conviction) have been prosecuted for those criminal attempts? Less than a dozen, in years. How many of those people who just tried to lie their way through a background check but were denied a firearm purchase then went on to acquire a weapon illegally by other means, instead of going to jail for that just-committed, demonstrable crime? Tens of thousands, at the very least. Again, this is an area where the NRA has been - year in, year out - begging federal officials to act. They have caught-red-handed evidence of criminals attempting to acquire weapons, and those guys just leave the dealer without consequence, and the NRA's lawyers and lobbyists have been pointing out those missed prosecution opportunities for years.
What a load of unadulterated horseshit
Well, since you took a moment to actually refute things in a calm, informative way, how can one argue with you? I do like the way that you've succinctly conveyed the research that explains how a tax aimed at just a few businesses with no clear plan or legal limitations in how or on what it will be spent will "fix homelessness." Thanks for your detailed analysis.
Oh, right, silly me. You just trotted out some lazy, childish ad hominem and thereby essentially conceded the point. Thanks!
We can ban assault weapons! Or at least make it hard for crazy people to get their hands on them!
Well, you're in luck! Assault weapons are already incredibly difficult to obtain unless you're willing to do so criminally. No assault weapon made after the 1980's can be sold in the US (unless it's to the government). And for those that are on the market, they cost many thousands of dollars if they're still functional, and buyers have to go through a lengthy and very expensive government tax/licensing process that includes a nearly proctological background check including multiple personal references and everything from banking info to employer interviews by BATFE feds. There's a reason that crimes committed by people using legally owned assault weapons are essentially non-existant.
.22 rimfire rifles. The rifles that share cosmetic similarities to assault weapons are used in only a tiny fraction of such cases, and most of those involve illegally owned weapons anyway.
Or are you talking about assault "style" rifles, that share some of the same cosmetic similarities as actual assault weapons? If so, then what you mean are "semi-automatic rifles," which of course have been available over the counter in this country for more than a century, and are the most common rifles in use. Untold millions of them. And yet, when it comes to murders, the FBI tells us that the number of people killed using a long gun of any kind is hugely eclipsed by the number of people who are beaten to death with bare hands, baseball bats, and fence posts. And of the tiny percentage that ARE killed using long guns, the vast majority of those are shotguns or simple little
But sure, let's keep crazy people from getting those. The NRA completely agrees with you, and has been calling for 30 years for stricter compliance with the sort of reporting processes and record keeping that would actually help with that. The murderer in Florida who killed 17 had a long history of crazy behavior and violent assault. So why did he pass the background check? Because an Obama-era program aimed at protecting minority teenagers from the legal consequences for violent behavior kept him off the books despite dozens of acts that would immediately prevent you or I from ever being able to legally possess any kind of firearm, ever. The NRA has encouraged, and congressional Republicans have passed a bill that tightens up exactly such sort of slop, and would have also prevented the recent Texas killer from passing a background check despite his previous employer (the Air Force) knowing he was a violent nutjob. So, it's good to know that you're with the NRA on this topic. It's an important one, and they've been preaching about it for decades. The push-back on it is coming from Democrats, so you might want to take it up with them.
Right, because the NRA's purpose is to PREVENT YOU FROM TAKING OTHER PEOPLE'S CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED RIGHTS AWAY. Just like the ACLU tends to focus on things like your rights as protected by the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments (and, sometimes, the 2nd, too).
And since there are some very well funded groups trying to take away your civil rights, the NRA needs to spend money to push back against that never ending attack. Hogg and company, on the other hand, are seeking money and political power in order to strip away your rights. See the difference? Don't pretend you don't.
Hogg didn't get shot at, but he sure is happy to exploit the fact that other people were in order to collect $ and logistical support from people like Soros as he goes out to gin up partisan fund raising and votes. Hogg and his types couldn't be more thrilled when a crazy person murders people, because they love a good emotional lever to use when trying to strip away ever more civil liberties.
Another vector for sponsored activists like Hogg to try to muster up reputation-trashing campaigns against businesses that insufficiently provide money and public support to the Chosen Virtue Signaling Marching Orders Issue Of The Day.
Why not fix it? Because the politicians don't know how to.
No, that's not it. It's not complicated. "Fixing" it would mean actually recognizing that people who own and operate successful businesses aren't evil villains that should be torn down through taxes in order to subsidize (rather than fix) the problems that plague the cities in which they operate. They don't want to fix a bill like that (in the sense that rational people would consider it fixed). They think the bill didn't go far enough. So any movement the opposite direction is just caving in to Eeeeeevil Capitalists who should be treated like revenue dairy cows to throw some day-to-day cash at the social paradise of tent cities and rampant drug abuse.
What they don't know how to do is to sufficiently hide what they're trying to do, so that the lawyers at Amazon can't see they're about to be punitively taxed for the sin of being successful and employing thousands and thousands of people.
Yes, I understand that you want people you don't like to die. That's standard issue progressive world view stuff, of course. You'd rather see people killed by organized criminals trafficking in opioids than confront those criminals if they happen to be from another country, because you're a childish, craven fool who thinks you'll score more pandering points inside your preferred echo chamber if you signal your compassionate virtue with regard to repeat felons in the country illegally. I get it. Carry on! You're the best possible thing to help keep progressive politicians from running the entire country, because your death-wish politics is toxic to normal people. So, more, please! Be MORE shrill! Tell people who aren't racists that they're racists - they love that! It makes them want to vote they way you demand, every time.
I know, you think that teachers getting death threats and giving up reporting to work, students being murdered for not joining the gang, and police unable to get anyone to work with them against the gang because all of the witnesses take the MS-13 death threats seriously ... you consider that to be just a bunch of scared suburbanites.
... delusional. It's real. I've personally lived it. I've watched our Salvadoran neighbor discover their dog, sliced into pieces, on their front porch, along with MS-13 tags spray painted on their front door (why? because their kid wouldn't join up at the local school, and had since gone off to live with relatives in order to save his life). Ever walked out the back door of your house, for a nice stroll in the community green space, only to find that your friendly local gang franchise was running a dog fighting ring there that morning, and approaching you with machetes for stopping to look, and reaching for your phone? No? Haven't had to spend an evening looking at MS-13 mug shots to try to identify the four guys that killed the local neighborhood handyman because he wouldn't be a drug mule?
So, do tell. If your tires were slashed and your kid came home from school telling you that MS-13 has told them they'll either help them or be killed (and your local news has lots of coverage of MS-13 leaving butchered bodies lying around in local parks, or burning in their cars in local parking lots) - you'd consider that to be just some friendly cultural exchange, perhaps? Have you ever walked out your front door to find three guys covered in MS-13 tattoos on your front porch staring you in the face, and telling you that anyone who calls the cops in your neighborhood will get their heart ripped out? Followed by you reading in your morning paper about another local resident who actually had their heart ripped out? It would be lovely to hear your plan for dealing with that at your kid's school and on your own street.
Let me guess, you'd call the cops. Nope! The police tell you, in so many words, that the don't have enough people available to safely patrol your neighborhood that evening, because of threats to the officers' lives. But please, phone in a report, and they'll pass it along to the gang task force for their meeting next month.
Your fantasy world, where this isn't actually happening, and where liberal politicians aren't promising MS-13 sanctuary so they don't have to hear someone like you calling them a racist, is
I know, you'd go all Rambo on that crew. Heck, there's only an estimated couple hundred of them living within a few square miles of your front door, so you couldn't definitely take them all out, right? Or would that be you being a racist? No, you're not a racist. You're just an uninformed idiot who prefers murderous gang members over your fellow citizens because you feel more virtuous in SJW mode, defending them - because you agree with Nancy Pelosi. MS-13 members exhibit a "spark of the devine," and shouldn't be acted against. It's mean.
Really? You think "MS-13" is a race? You're everything that's wrong with contemporary public discourse. But please, keep it up! Do it even louder! That's what cost you the 2016 election, and the more the merrier.
MS-13 "taking over schools" is Fox agitprop. Stop repeating "faux news" for the stupid.
We had to move out of a neighborhood that was being overrun by MS-13. The police would no longer even enter our street without multiple vehicles. Moms from Central America started taking out second mortgages to get their kids out of the MS-13 recruiting ground and local franchise HQ that was the area's high school, and put them in private schools. Your witless, low-information attempt to blame that reality on Fox would be hilarious to me, if we hadn't had MS-13's local troops relive us of property, threaten our lives, and run our best neighbors out of their homes. You know all of this, but are trying to wish it away because it doesn't suit your personal political narrative. Stop it.
Homeless people -- what do you propose as a solution?
There are more jobs available than there are people to fill them. There's a reason that people congregate in places like Seattle and San Francisco to camp out and set up tent cities. Because those cities encourage it, practically and culturally and financially. You also know this, but are equally annoyed on that front, because it would mean confronting the reality of which sort of monolithic partisan political establishment totally controls places where that happens.
American cities really need to stop catering to companies that aren't willing to lift a finger to help local quality of life.
No, American voters need to stop giving power and resources to municipal politicians that seem to be doing everything possible to destroy the local quality of life (say, by making their city irresistible and consequence-free to squatters camping and shitting in people's front yards, MS-13 getting sanctuary while taking over local schools, etc). The pressure to reverse idiotic moves like the now-dead Seattle plan was as much from regular Seattle residents sick to death of the city's deliberate infliction of problems like that on them. That the city was looking to fund even more of it by milking some of the town's bigger employers shows how much they were trying to avoid confronting their own absurd policies, which caused the problem in the first place.
You stop using ground-up rhinoceros horn fertilizer on the trees, and look what happens.
So what you're saying is that the waste management companies should charge more, and presumably, write bigger checks to ... you, I guess? Amazon isn't a waste management company.
now days
And, the word you're looking for there is "nowadays." Or, "these days" would also have worked.
Also, you could consider, just for fun, correctly processing a little humor deployed when you're opining about who has or needs which higher education degrees and the don't handle the plural form correctly.
I see proper manners also escapes so many people now days.
That should be "manners also escape," not "escapes."
these degree's
You were smart not to waste your money on an English Lit degree.
mass shooters are provably 99% right winger
So what you're saying is that you're really, really terrible at math.