Waiting

[The_Doc_Man]

I have no idea what that means.

To quote that great philosopher, Conan the Barbarian: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women." Do you recall the news wonks on the night that Trump won the first time? They were lamenting all over the place, emotionally crushed, fleeing to a place of solitude to sulk and lick their wounds. (Figuratively, of course.)

The emotional pain that he would inflict on those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome will be plenty of retribution for the pain they have inflicted on him for the last eight years.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

And how many are killed by guns? In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That is about the same number of deaths we suffered in Viet Nam.

While it may seem like a huge number, a lot of those deaths are drug-war or gang-war casualties. I know that for a fact in New Orleans because I see what gets reported. You know what? If one gang-thug or drug-thug kills another one, I'm sad for the decedent's surviving family, but it is hard to get worked up about taking another violent thug off the streets. It is a true moral dilemma.

 

[Isaac]

And how many are killed by guns? In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That is about the same number of deaths we suffered in Viet Nam.

And so deductively reasoning, what would happen if all the law abiding people gave up or were banned from having guns tomorrow?
They would have no way to defend themselves from the criminals who do have guns and any number of other harmful things
The only net effect would be more violence and the worst kind - perpetrated against people who have no way to defend themselves.

You don't come to a gunfight with a knife. How many crimes have been detered simply from the sight or sound of a gun on the good guy?

We'll never know, but I think it's obvious/evident enough that the number would be very many.

 

[Isaac]

I do not disagree with you for the most part. I wan't lecturing regarding all gun laws. I was writing about bump stocks. Like a Republican, I used to be a hunter, birds and deer; now I am not because of age. I see absolutly not need for the public to have any sort of weapon that can fire 400 to 800 rounds per minute. Those will invariably fall into the hands of the wrong people. The code needs to be changed to reflect the fire power, not the mechanics. I know a lot about guns, and an AR 15 with a bump stock fires at the rate of a machine gun, which are illegal. I used to have a lot of long guns, bolt and falling block. I fixed up a Savage 250/3000, and with a 64 power scope I was shooting quater sized groups at 200 meters. All those guns are gone, and all thats left is an antique 12 gauge shout gun, that was given to me by my father in law. Do you think bump stocks should be legal?

FWIW, I think bump stocks should be illegal. The supreme court did their best to do their job of applying law to facts. Now it Congress's turn to simply explicitly ban bump stocks. I shudder when I hear the ignorance of some people angry at the supreme court for doing their job ... because it's as dumb as being mad at a policeman who refuses to arrest somebody who's doing something that's not illegal - No, he's doing his job correctly.

BUT, I would support banning bump stocks - heck yeah, all day long. AS LONG AS the gov does a good job of comprehensively trying to round up and ferret out the ones that are out there, because (again), what we NEVER want, no matter what, is a situation where ONLY the good guys have been banned from something all the bad guys have - that puts us at a disadvantage again.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Waiting for news about the next bump stock massacre.

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. People who commit mass murder are insane and belong in a mental hospital. But wait, committing them would infringe on their freedom. So, instead, friends, family, doctors, and the police all look the other way until the unthinkable happens again. And yet, you refuse to address the actual issue - drugs, mental health issues. People who want to kill people will still kill people. They just find other ways to do it. Bombs are very effective. So are knives. You don't get to kill as many people with a knife in a short time frame as you could with a gun but you can do some serious damage. How about cars? Cars are great weapons. Just drive through a parade. The people fall like bowling pins and you can get a lot at one time. When are we going to ban cars? Look how many people the 9/11 murders killed with a couple of planes. We didn't ban planes.

One thing I learned very early in my IT career was how to identify the REAL problem. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my time and my client's money and having no success. Once you can accept the fact that a gun cannot kill anyone unless it is in the hands of a murder, you might be able to come up with rational solutions to "gun free zone" massacres. Oh, did the shooter break the law by taking a gun into a "gun free zone". It must be the fault of the gun.

 

[AccessBlaster]

First solve the Biden migrant crime before moving onto bump stocks.

 

[jpl458]

There was no out smarting involved, just a right leaning congress, and, I am not a liberal. The far left is just as dilusional as the far right. You think I am a liberal from the position you hold, which is, anyone to the left of you is a liberal even if they are a bit right of center. BTW, I don't think that Trump is all that smart. He still does not know how tariffs work. In the debate he claimed that the US took in a lot on money from China because of his tariffs. Consumers (like you and me) pay the tariffs. When he said that I stopped watching the debate. He has also claimed that he carried California in the 2020 election. He did not. He lost by 5 million votes and did got zero electoral votes from California. That is fact.

 

[jpl458]

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. People who commit mass murder are insane and belong in a mental hospital. But wait, committing them would infringe on their freedom. So, instead, friends, family, doctors, and the police all look the other way until the unthinkable happens again. And yet, you refuse to address the actual issue - drugs, mental health issues. People who want to kill people will still kill people. They just find other ways to do it. Bombs are very effective. So are knives. You don't get to kill as many people with a knife in a short time frame as you could with a gun but you can do some serious damage. How about cars? Cars are great weapons. Just drive through a parade. The people fall like bowling pins and you can get a lot at one time. When are we going to ban cars? Look how many people the 9/11 murders killed with a couple of planes. We didn't ban planes.

One thing I learned very early in my IT career was how to identify the REAL problem. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my time and my client's money and having no success. Once you can accept the fact that a gun cannot kill anyone unless it is in the hands of a murder, you might be able to come up with rational solutions to "gun free zone" massacres. Oh, did the shooter break the law by taking a gun into a "gun free zone". It must be the fault of the gun.

You misss the point. Should bump stocks be legal, yes or no? SImple question, should elicit a simple answer.

 

[AccessBlaster]

BTW, I don't think that Trump is all that smart. He still does not know how tariffs work.

Sure he does. He knows that placing tariffs on China makes their products more expensive. The point is they accept none of our goods but expect us to buy theirs.

He explained how it works in the debate, did you miss the debate @jpl458

 

[Pat Hartman]

No, you miss the point. The decision was not up to the Supreme court so Yes, they made the correct decision. A bumpstock is not an automatic rifle. This is the same concept as overturning Roe v. Wade. If Congress wants to write a law to ban bumpstocks, let them do it. I would be in favor. It is the job of the Supreme Court to determine if a law is Constitutional. It is not their job to write law even when their "opinion" seems like the majority would favor it. CONGRESS makes laws. PERIOD. That was the mistake of Roe v. Wade. The Supremes MADE LAW. They overstepped their boundaries. Overturning Roe v. Wade, put the abortion decision back into the hands of the state. Our Constitution is very specific regarding what powers belong to the Federal government and it is very wrong with the Supremes take it upon themselves to make law as they have many times over the years. Dred Scott was horrendous. The Obama Care fine was "legal" was also bad. And there were many others. This was not one of them and how I personally feel about bumpstocks is irrelevant and it should be to you also.

I care about the Constitution and I very much want the Supreme Court to care about it also. I do NOT want the Supreme Court to make law. I want Congress to do their damn job and make the laws that need to be made. I want the Executive branch to ENFORCE those laws not violate them because they don't like them as they do with immigration, etc. We've got Biden promising school loan forgiveness. HE does not have the authority to do that and yet he thumbs his nose at the Supreme Court and does it anyway. Talk about lawless!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mike Krailo]

I take the view that citizens should not be banned for owning just about any kind of gun you can think of, but the more dangerous one's should be locked up and only used when there is reason to do so. Not for committing crimes of course, but more for self defense purposes or in the case of anarchy in the streets, suddenly you are your own police at that point. That being said, those guns and pretty much any guns should be controlled carefully and as safely as possible using a gun safe or whatever extra measure to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands when not needed for an actual legitimate reason. You hope you never have to ever use them just like nuclear weapons between countries. So disarming the people is a big no no in our country unless you have been found to be mentally unstable or used them to commit crimes.

Laws that end up eating away at this basic right, like you can't have this, or can't have that because we said so, are all a means to chip away at our basic constitutional rights.

The second amendment was written the way it was to prevent those in power from reversing this important right and many more rights, and taking it away from the people. What they are slowly and methodically trying to do in stages is reducing "the right to bare arms" into "the right to own a pea shooter" which is clearly not what it says, but that's what they want. At that point the pea shooters can then be confiscated easily and along with it even more rights.

We probably go down the road of digital currency first before that happens, and your life could be shut down instantly by denying all ability to use your earned income. That's game over for all of us.

Consumers (like you and me) pay the tariffs

If you live here in the U.S., please purchase American products as much as possible. That's what tariffs do, they make the decision easier for you to make the right one. Your not forced to purchase anything as you suggest. What happens to all that tariff money when no one buys foreign goods anymore or reduces them significantly?

Now you might know that China's products are embedded in just about everything so it's tough to find anything truly and wholly made in America anymore, so obviously it will take a very long time to swing the pendulum back in the other direction. It just doesn't happen overnight. How long has the no tariff policy been in place for China? A very long time. So of course it's not going to be immediately apparent right away how beneficial it really is to have these tariffs in place. They are really there to prevent a trade imbalance, plain and simple. Ideally, we should be able to trade equally and fairly, but China doesn't want to play that game, they would rather have the casino rules where they always win.

The more immediate issue is our runaway national debt and not bringing in enough economic growth to support it. Not having the tariffs in place, will just speed our financial ruin a lot quicker. It's not a perfect solution to anything, but it's a step in the right direction. Getting us into many wars and creating trillion dollar spending bills is definitely not a step in the right direction. Paying for things with money printed out of thin air is not a step in the right direction.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The numbers our government works with are so obscenely large that they are essentially meaningless. That makes politicians think of money as if it came out of Monopoly game. And they spend it like drunken sailors because they can't think of it as their own money. It is MY money, and I care but too many citizens don't care. Congress just spends like there is no tomorrow.

 

[Mike Krailo]

Like the national debt going parabolic, government has gotten too big, and going back to small government is going to be darn near impossible at this point. How do get out of this mess?

 

[jpl458]

“Not going to drive them higher.”​

— Former President Donald J. Trump on whether tariffs would increase prices

This is false.​

Tariffs are designed to protect domestic industries by raising the price of foreign products, and economists anticipate that any increase in tariffs would result in some increase in prices.

Economic studies found that the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods during his first term were largely paid by American consumers, rather than Chinese companies. In a recent letter, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote that there was concern that Trump’s policies, including his plan to impose blanket tariffs on most imports, would reignite inflation.

China does not pay for the tariffs imposed on them.

 

[AccessBlaster]

would reignite inflation

Where have you been?

 

[Pat Hartman]

This is false.​

Tariffs are designed to protect domestic industries by raising the price of foreign products, and economists anticipate that any increase in tariffs would result in some increase in prices.

I think if you actually look at where tariffs are applied, you will see that they are not applied on necessary items. Unless the foreign supplier is trying to undermine a US industry as they did with steel and solar panels.

China cheats all the time. Must be why the progressives love them so much. If the Chinese government decides that they want to dominate a particular industry, they subsidize their local industry so that their goods can be sold at a price our home made goods can't match let alone beat.

I think our policy should be reciprocal tariffs, AKA "fair" trade. If some country applies tariffs to our goods, we apply tariffs to their goods. If some country does not allow Americans to own businesses in their country, then we should not allow their citizens to own businesses in the US. I was flabbergasted when I went to Kuwait to work in the 70's but I learned a lot about the world. I learned that the company I worked for, which was Danish, was required to have a Kuwaiti partner who owned 51% of the business but who had not been required to put up a penny. Foreigners couldn't own property either. And then we learned that showing the sole of your shoe to an Arab was an insult so my husband had to cross his legs like a girl or keep them firmly planted on the carpet lest he start a war.

 

[Steve R.]

“Not going to drive them higher.”​

— Former President Donald J. Trump on whether tariffs would increase prices

This is false.​

Tariffs are designed to protect domestic industries by raising the price of foreign products, and economists anticipate that any increase in tariffs would result in some increase in prices.

Economic studies found that the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods during his first term were largely paid by American consumers, rather than Chinese companies. In a recent letter, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote that there was concern that Trump’s policies, including his plan to impose blanket tariffs on most imports, would reignite inflation.

China does not pay for the tariffs imposed on them.

And Biden kept kept them!!! Moreover: Biden increases tariffs on $18 billion in Chinese imports in a new warning to Beijing.
So where is your outrage against Biden screwing the consumer?

 

[AccessBlaster]

It's almost time to start a new thread, this one's beat

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You misss the point. Should bump stocks be legal, yes or no? SImple question, should elicit a simple answer.

You missed the REAL point. We know for an absolute fact that criminals don't CARE what is legal or illegal. Bump stocks EXIST. Now that it exists, if someone wants one bad enough to break the law to get it (or make it), we can't stop it. That horse has left the barn.

Should bump stocks be legal? Your question is moot. How simple is THAT answer?

 

[Jon]

You can 3D print stuff nowadays. Perhaps you can 3D print the parts if bump stocks get banned.