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@Greyparrot
Thanks. Most people on the left are far too retarded to see what censorship leads to.
Do you not see the irony of that response? Trump covers stuff up constantly. He is just as corrupt, if not far more corrupt, than Joe. But you don't care about that because he is a republican. And yet your 1st response is to say that people on the left are "too retarded to see what censorship leads to".
You ignore trumps corruption and his coverups, then insult people on the left for exactly what you are doing.
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Couldn't have said it better myself. Keep voting the lesser evil and over time the shift will come. Thanks for agreeing.
this doesn't even make sense. Keep voting for people who have no intention of allowing any meaningful change and change will come? That is the opposite of what is going to happen. If you vote for people who don't want change then, to quote Joe Biden, "nothing would fundamentally change".
This is exactly how we got trump in the 1st place. People know that shit is broken. They want change. Obama was elected to bring that change, he didn't. He kowtowed to right wing ideologues and failed to live up to his promises. So then it got more extreme. Trump promised solutions to problems too. So people turned to him looking for an answer. He didn't have one either because he is a con man. But swinging back to people like Joe Biden (who was intimately involved in causing alot of these problems) will not bring change. He and the Dem leadership don't have any solutions because they helped design (and profited from) the broken system.
Change will only come when they are forced into it, or when they are replaced.
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@Greyparrot
I don't care who you cheer for in politics, this kind of stuff should concern everybody.
assuming the things he is saying are true, yes that would be concerning. however, since a large percentage of what he says is lies, I have no reason to think it is true. He could easily be lying about critical details, or he could be lying about the entire thing. At this point, I wouldn't put it past him to make the whole thing up and report it as fact.
The story isn't about due diligence on Tucker's part or even what the documents were about. The story has and always has been, the deliberate coverup, media blackout, and outright censorship of anything at all related to this. I don't care if blank pages were stolen, the fact that they objectively were is bullshit.
I agree, coverups are bad. But where was this outrage when trump covers things up? He has lied and covered shit up his entire term as president and republicans didn't give a shit. but now that it is documents (of extremely questionable origin) that might harm a democrat and a potential cover up is supposedly a huge scandal that should concern everybody.
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@Castin
And yes, that means the republicans will win.*eye twitch*
a short term pain to get long term benefits. A small cost to get huge gains. That is how most of our world works. If you aren't willing to pay a price for change, then you won't ever get it.
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@Greyparrot
That's an interesting alternate hypothesis.
I don't see how other ones would make sense. Obama promised big changes. Ones you would probably label as socialist and swept to power easily. Then he didn't deliver on those "socialist" promises and his support dropped.
He didn't lose support because he went to far. He didn't go anywhere near far enough to keep his promises. He lost support because he kept trying to make deals with right wing ideologues and didn't accomplish the things he promised.
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@Castin
But there doesn't seem to be an effective and realistic way of holding the Democratic party to higher standards without giving more power to the other side. There's never a third party to vote for that has enough clout to win, and simply withholding our votes plays into the Repulicans' hands.
the one thing that politicians want more than anything else is to win. That is where their money and power flows from. If they can win while selling out to corporations and right wing lobbyists, they are damn sure going to do that. We need to make sure the democratic party knows that doing it guarantees the death of their power. And yes, that means the republicans will win. But after a couple of cycles of getting crushed over and over they will learn, or they will get replaced by people who are willing to listen.
Groups like justice democrats are a good measure. Make a rating system for every single member of congress and the senate. rank their voting record and their campaign promises on a "progressive scale". if they get under a 50%(or pick any number), then you campaign for all progressives to tank that candidate and ensure they lose. This is how groups like the NRA scare republicans into getting in line on guns or other issues. It has proven to be effective. You can scare democrats into line one by one, or you drive them out of government.
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@Greyparrot
Do you think 2010 was a referendum based on the popular perception (justified or not) that Obama and Obama's Congress went too far with socialist policies?
2010 was a referendum on whether Obama went far enough. and he didn't. Obama made lots of promises of hope and change. then he used right wing plans and made changes around the edges. Obama isn't a bad president because he was "a socialist". He was a mediocre president because he was too right wing.
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@Danielle
I wouldn't go so far as to say Biden is a right-winger. He has the most progressive platform of any presidential Dem candidate in history. But he's certainly moderate to progressive standards.
look at his history in government. He has a long history of being right wing (and dead wrong) on lots of issues. He is a right wing candidate. He has made some minorly progressive promises, but I have very low hope that he will carry through with any of them. He has been recorded promising his donors that "nothing will fundamentally change", and he meant it.
I don't have any hope they'll acknowledge being wrong about anything, ever though.
they sometimes acknowledge it on minor points of what you are discussing with them. but yeah, in general they will deny reality, move the goalposts, or just plain change the topic rather than admit they are wrong.
That's Trump's M.O. and they eat that shit up, so of course they will emulate the same demagoguery and think they're right somehow. Sad.
while I agree this is definitely an issue, lets not pretend the democratic party is different. When trump was enriching himself and his family, the media and the democrats made a huge fuss about it. But the bidens have been doing similar things for years (as well as most of the elected democrats) and they don't ever make a peep about that. Most people who vote democratic would do the same thing, they would be annoyed when trump does it, but turn a blind eye to the democrats doing it.
you just don't see as much of it on here because there are very few centrists or left leaning people who post here.
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@Danielle
I voted for a Democrat 1x in my life yet the people on this site call me a radical left-winger lol. They're a joke. Pretty much everything they say is wrong.
Yeah, they've drank way too much of the coolaid. Biden is a pretty right wing candidate, but if you listened to fox news you'd think he was some communist organizer. People on here are dead set convinced Obama care is communism, even though it is the right wing plan. A real left wing plan would have gone much further.
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@fauxlaw
Joe Biden is not, and will not be that genius. That ability is not expressed merely by an election. No. That brilliance is not the result of acclaim by the people, but by personal ambition, planning, and execution. Skills Biden lacks in spades.
lol trump has run tons of businesses into the ground. He gets sued over and over. He doesn't accomplish things by being brilliant. He accomplishes things by grifting and hiring other (much smarter people than him) to do it for him because he is a dumbass. But as president, he filled posts based on how much they kiss his ass, not how intelligent they are. Which is why his entire administration has been one train wreck after another.
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@AddledBrain
Do you see this proves my point ? If 1/3 of convictions are overturned on appeal, why don't we require the same extensive appeals process for all capital defendants ? Why should those facing life in prison not get the same full access to required appeals so they can get their convictions overturned on appeal ?
It simply isn't possible. This level of appeal is very time consuming. the justice system already struggles to cope with the amount of cases and procedure they have. This extra level of care needs to be applied when you are seeking the ultimate punishment.
Again, why are defendants not facing execution not afforded the required extra steps ? They're arbitrarily getting short shrift simply due to the nature of the punishment they face. If the required defense is good for one defendant, it should be good for all defendants charged with the same crime.
same as above. All accused people have a right to defend themselves. However people who stand to receive the ultimate punishment must be given extra care as the punishment is irrevocable.
Additionally, execution is not murder. Murder is an illegal act. Execution is not only legal, it is prescribed by law.
if you are killing innocent people because you intentionally removed some of the safety procedures, that seems like murder to me. Or at least negligent homicide.
There will always be some level of doubt about whether a defendant is guilty.Not near as much as you claim. If that were the case, there would be much less crime.
this doesn't make sense. There is always doubt. The relevant question is whether there is reasonable doubt. If there is a reasonable chance they are innocent, then they should not be found guilty. but there is always a chance the person is innocent.
A large percentage, indeed the largest majority of convicted criminals are, without doubt, guilty .. proven by their own admission or by airtight evidence which, as I previously stated, is getting more and more assured all the time by the use of new technologies and methods such as the one I offered by the John Howard Society.
it's hard to know exact numbers. But the estimate I found was that 5% of convicted criminals in the US are innocent. so 1 of ever 20 people convicted were innocent. Given the current prison population, that is about 120,000 innocent people in prison in the US right now. That is pretty high to me. If 5% of the time you started a car it exploded, no one would ever drive a car.
I'd say, let them rot in jail.as a stand-alone paragraph with no context or mitigation ? Please own up to it if you said it. If you don't mean it, just say you don't mean it and it will be finished.
You keep insisting on reading meaning into a sentence even after I have explained the meaning of the sentence. I said those words. I meant them to mean that leaving a guilty person in prison for life is a much better plan that executing them. Whatever other meaning you read into that is all on you.
The death penalty doesn't solve these problems you are pointing out.State execution absolutely, without a doubt, solves the problem of one single violent predator having the opportunity to kill another person sometime during his life. No other method can grant the guarantee execution does.
ok, but is that even a problem? How many men convicted to life without parole are escaping and killing people? You have yet to establish that there is any significant risk of this happening. If it only happens once every 30 years or something (yes I made that up as an example), then spending hundreds of billions of dollars and killing a bunch of wrongly convicted people is a much worse option.
You are advocating for killing lots of people to solve a negligible problem.The problem is absolutely not negligible and it has a simple, absolutely effective solution.
prove the problem isn't negligible. Show me that alot of innocent people are dying from criminals convicted to life without parole escaping and killing people. If you can't show that this is something that happens very often, then it is a negligible problem.
absolutely effective solution.
but the costs of that solution are huge. billions of dollars wasted, innocent people executed. Why spend billions and execute innocent people to solve a negligible problem?
My question to you is, : Why would you feel the lives of proven, violent criminals are more valuable than the lives of those they kill during the course of their lives after we already knew they were violent, had the propensity to kill and had killed people ?
this question is a misdirection attempting to trigger an emotional response. I never said they are more valuable. I said there is no value in executing them. You are advocating that executing them is better than imprisoning them. But it is way more expensive and leads to the deaths of wrongly convicted people. You have yet to provide evidence that many people would be saved by executing them or that saving this tiny number of people is worth the massive price tag attached and the number of innocent lives that would be lost to executing wrongfully convicted people.
If you want to show me why executions are needed, then you need to provide evidence that there is a real problem that this solves.
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By voting thirdparty intentionally to 'send a point' or worse not voting at all, you over time teach the left-wing party to adapt to the new centre-shifted-right-and-conservative if they want to take away from their opponents' voting base, which is the primary objective if you want to win an election of any kind as measuring the 'rebels who voted thirdparty or didn't vote who would otherwise support us' is hard to weight up.
alright, then what method do you think would be more effective? For example, medicare for all is quite popular. It is overwhelmingly popular among democrats and still has some support among republicans. However the democratic party establishment has time and again completely refused to even consider it.
How should the left proceed? They want the democratic party to listen to what people want and the democratic party leaders don't want to. How does voting for right wing candidates (like joe biden) help them get what they want? Electing right wing people brings about right wing policy. So how does the "vote blue no matter who" help the left in any way?
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@AddledBrain
Buff, the extra costs heaped on capital cases of defendants up for execution are arbitrary and contrived. They're instituted exclusively to make it harder to help secure the Community from harm by way of execution. That's the only reason they exist.
no. they exist to reduce the risk of executing innocent people. Some of them are required by the constitution. Around 1/3rd of all people sentenced to death have their sentences overturned on appeal.
If it's important to require this extraordinary "Cadillac" defense for those who face execution why shouldn't we give the same opportunity to those who are on trial but aren't up for execution ? We're cheating those up for life in prison out of the top notch defense that those who face execution are afforded. Why the unfairness ?
everyone gets the right to defend themselves at trial. We require extra steps be taken to sentence someone to death because this is the ultimate punishment that cannot be taken back. Once it is carried out, it is final. So we must be more careful about it. That is not "unfairness".
If this enormous expense is necessary in order to find justice for some capital defendants it should be necessary for all. Then, if all capital defendants receive the same quality defense, supporting a violent criminal in prison, feeding him, clothing him, securing him, securing others from him and taking care of his medical needs for his entire life would be much more costly than executing him and securing the Community.
your argument seems to be that we should just rush through capitol cases and kill them as quickly as possible. We would be murdering alot of innocent people that way.
We shouldn't execute based on unsure evidence. Indeed, a defendant shouldn't even be found guilty on unsure evidence.
very few things in life are certain. There will always be some level of doubt about whether a defendant is guilty. There is always a way (even if it is ludicrously unlikely) that the evidence could exist and the person could still be innocent. If we required absolute certainly in every case, very few people would ever be punished for their crimes.
Regarding "rotting in jail", you're the one who said it. It sounds vengeful, not just or safe.
you are choosing to interpret my words that way. I said that once they are locked up, they are no longer a threat. You have protected society. Pushing to have them killed even though you have already neutralized the threat smacks of vengeance.
You keep saying confining someone in prison with no possibility of parole is safe but, to be sure, nothing can be as save as eliminating the threat surely and permanently through execution. It's the only thing than can guarantee safety from repeat offense. People are killed in prison, even without the killer getting out in some way, quite often.
ok, so you want to execute all criminals for every offense? that is the only way to ensure there are no repeat offenders and that no one dies in a prison. The death penalty doesn't solve these problems you are pointing out.
People locked up for life without parole rarely escape. You are advocating for killing lots of people to solve a negligible problem.
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You can try, you will of course fail and prove to them that it's better to move further and further Right until your group as a whole learn to stop being whiny brats and show gratitude to the only Party that can truly defeat the Republicans or else you can perish like Labour did to the Convervatives in the UK this election.
wow, that is exactly the mentality of the democratic party. That the left needs to shut up and vote the way they are told. That it doesn't matter if the democrats will do almost nothing for the left, will actively spit on the left. They should just be grateful for their right wing rule. That is complete bullshit.
The issue isn't people who votes thirdparty itself, especially not if their area didn't have any chance at a non-Conservative seat. The issue is people who refused to vote, voted Conservative or intentionally threw 50/50 seat areas solely out of spite and whining at Corbyn for not being the perfect candidate.
oh look, blaming the voters. You are just straight up taking your arguments from the DNC. Obama recently did the same thing. He whined that it was people not voting for him in the midterms that kept him from doing anything. So it's all the voters fault that he was a shitty president. It had nothing to do with the fact that he had 2 years of control of congress and the senate and did fuck all with it. No, it must be the voters that are wrong. It couldn't possibly be that people refused to vote for him because he refused to do the things he promised.
You do not encourage a party to move to the Left by teaching them that those that are willing and happy to vote support more right-wing policies.
True. which is why all of the left should start voting 3rd party. Because you also do not encourage a party to move left by blindly supporting them when they keep shifting right.
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Meanwhile, you sit there going 'oh yes look at me I've done a great thing now they'll move more to the left!" but in fact your type has punished them in a way that means they only see active voters moving towards the right-wing, rather than seeing inactive non-voters moving towards the left-wing.
fair point. but if they are so stupid that they insist on learning the opposite lesson, then the left needs to go further to make it unmistakable. For example, start a 3rd party and tank them even harder. And make it crystal clear the reason they are doing it is that the democratic party is too far right. It's pretty hard to miss the message when a solid percentage of your voters are voting for someone further left and that costs you your job.
Then the message is crystal clear. Appeal to the left or lose you damn job.
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But people who think like you are teaching them the opposite, moving them more to the right.
how so? they completely ignore the left either way because they see it has absolutely no cost to them. That is why they move right. It is the complacency of the left that allows them to do this. If the left simply refused to support them, they would lose and need to actually respond to what the people want.
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@AddledBrain
I question whether executing a criminal is more expensive that supporting him in prison for his entire life.
here is some info on it. It is much more expensive sentence someone to death than it is to incarcerate them for life.
If the costs are greater, It's because the costs and impediments are contrived.
There are lots of reasons it is more expensive. But generally, there are extra steps required to try them. There are constitutionally required steps for appeals. It can take decades to go from trial to actually executing someone. And every step of the way is extremely expensive. But this is required to try to prevent innocent people from being executed.
Regarding executing wrongly convicted criminal, you can't pin that on the institution of state execution. That's the fault of a broken justice system. Fix the problem where is lies don't blame an effective solution.
humans are fallible. We make mistakes. we convict innocent people sometimes. If we put them in prison and more evidence comes to light, we can let them out. If we kill them, there is no correcting the mistake.
Regarding rotting in jail, that reeks of vengeance to me, not safety.
how so? They are safely locked away and unable to hurt anyone. They are no threat in prison. Trying to kill someone who can't harm you, that reeks of vengeance.
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@AddledBrain
I don't think the risk of criminals with a life sentence escaping is all that high. Do you know how many of such criminals actually escape?
I think the risk of executing innocent people, along with the fact that executions are actually more expensive than incarcerating them pretty well eliminates execution as valuable tool. There have been many cases of innocent people being wrongly executed, and there is no way to take that back. Since the process to execute someone requires numerous appeals, it is actually extremely expensive and takes alot of time and effort for the courts.
I'd say, let them rot in jail.
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I don't see how or why you disagree to me.
in this specific election cycle, I don't. Trump is dangerous and needs to go.
in most other election cycles, i do. The democratic party, since clinton primarily but even going back earlier, has shifted further to the right on economic and social issues. I mean Joe Biden pushed Ronald Reagan to be tougher in punishing drug addicts (while his son was one but wasn't subject to the punishment Joe wanted to give to others). Most of the people who make the leadership of the democratic party, don't actually represent the will of the people who vote for them. But they have learned the lesson that if they rule like moderate republicans, the left has no choice but to vote for them and they can compete for right wing votes. So they win, even though they consistently screw over a large percentage of americans.
The only way to stop them from doing that is to teach them that ruling like a republican means electoral loss.
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@SirAnonymous
your stats don't say that either. Attempting the crime, is a crime. So by the time the gun was used, there was already a crime. So no, it does not reduce crime.That's a valid point. It would reduce the number of successfully carried out crimes, though, which is still a good thing.
but none of the things I have suggested would change that though. ARs aren't generally used for defense. Large capacity mags aren't needed for that either. So even if everything i suggested were implemented, this wouldn't change.
ok. but that means that restrictions on mag sizes would have no negative effect, but still have a positive effect. that's a win-win.No. In that scenario mag size restrictions have neither a positive nor a negative impact because the gun is never used.
it has no negative impact on a law abiding citizen. but if a criminal cannot get access to high capacity mags, it has a significant positive impact.
You're confusing correlation and causation. There are large number of differences between countries. They have large numbers of societal and policy differences other than just magazine sizes. Comparing the two and saying, "It's due to this policy right here" is frankly silly. Unless you have strong evidence that it is, in fact, due to that policy rather than other factors, this is a complete non-argument.
since america has never made any serious attempts to limit mag sizes (all attempts that I am aware of have had serious limitations based on which guns they are applied to or which states they apply to. this massively hinders their effectiveness) which means there is no apples to apples comparison. So you are asking for definitive proof that cannot, by definition, exist. Comparing the US situation to countries that have enforced such restrictions is the closest comparison that it available.
i reject the premise that you would need a high capacity mag to defend yourself in these scenarios.You reject it, but you have no reason to reject it. As you point out yourself, people miss. If someone is under attack by multiple assailants, they're probably going to need more than 5 shots.
I reject it because there is no evidence it is true. How many scenarios actually occur where a victim shoots all of their multiple assailants? I'm guessing very few. Either they get scared off by the gun, or the victim gets gunned down by being outnumbered and outgunned. What kind of scenario would possibly require a person to have that much firepower, and they are actually likely to survive it? And how rare are those types of scenarios?
you haven't established high capacity mags ever save anyone.Your rejection of my argument has no basis in fact.
your argument has little to no evidence that it is true.
And you are assuming that it does. And again, you're ignoring that people can save their lives with those weapons.
and you have yet to show that it is more likely they could save lives with high capacity mags than without. While I believe it is quite obvious that being limited to low capacity mags would hinder someone's ability to shoot a large number of people.
And even if they do, your work isn't done. Banning ARs also means that people can't protect themselves with them, so you would also have to demonstrate that the number of people saved by an AR ban was greater than the number of people who couldn't protect themselves because of the ban.
why would i have to show that? There is no evidence that I am aware of that an AR is ever more effective at personal defense than a handgun or a shotgun. So banning an AR would have no impact on this at all.
Those are legal, although they are heavily restricted. Except for flame throwers. Those aren't heavily restricted.
if you want to put the same restrictions on ARs that are on Grenade launchers, that would also work. but that means controls on how you get them, what ammo you can have, background checks, registering the weapon. If those rules applied to all weapons, that would be great.
Yes and no. The first gun that had the AR-15 name was designed for the military and was adopted as the M16. However, the AR-15 as we know it today is a different gun designed specifically for civilians. The major difference between the two is that the AR-15 that became the M16 is capable of automatic fire, whereas today's AR-15s are not.
so basically, it is a gun that was designed for military use, that was slightly modified and sold to civilians. By definition, it was designed as a military weapon.
As for nukes, there is a fundamental difference between nukes and almost every other weapon. They are simply so powerful that there is no legitimate civilian purpose for them.
I would argue ARs meet the same definition. They are far more powerful than any legitimate civilian purpose warrants.
In fact, privately owned warships are mentioned in the Constitution when it gives Congress the authority to grant letters of marque, which are authorizations for private citizens to use their own cannon-laden ships to capture enemy ships.
A letter of marque puts you in direct service to the government. You are licensed to arm your vessel and attack enemy vessels. At that point you aren't really a civilian any more. So the comparison seems a bit moot.
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@ILikePie5
So the DNI is lying along with the FBI. Ok.
I didn't say that. He is a pollical appointee, so it is always possible. But there is no evidence he is lying. The FBI has not confirmed anything one way or the other. They basically just refused to comment on an active case, which is what they are supposed to do.
to comment on an ongoing investigation before it is completed to benefit your own political faction? Yeah, that is super biased.Or he’s trying to tell the truth while Adam Schiff lies his ass of that this is a Russian campaign without any sort of intelligence.
and the 50 intelligence officials who say this is exactly how russia would carry out a misinformation campaign? they are lying too?
what? no they wouldn't. The FBI is not supposed to comment on ongoing investigations. That would make them as guilty of political game playing as right wing politicians like to say they are.Yaaaa just like how Jim Comey said they’re investigating Hillary’s emails right before the election right?
yeah, and people said that was unacceptable too. which it was. The FBI is not supposed to comment on active investigations. Especially when they are of a political nature and before an election. There are examples where they did it anyway, but they aren't supposed to. So it is hardly surprising they refused to comment.
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@Greyparrot
It is just yet another distraction.It's almost like the left does not actually care about gun deaths.
no, it's like the topic is specifically about ARs and not gun deaths in general. You are just trying to derail the topic.
banning them is not an ideal solution.Why not?
because people have a right to defend themselves. If we can do that and also bring down gun deaths, then that is the ideal solution. Hence regulating them would be better than banning them.
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even the name of this topic is stupid. I assume Hidin biden refers to him understanding and respecting the global crisis that is ongoing. Trump on the other hand constantly undermines it and holds super spreader events.
I'll take the guy who takes a global crisis seriously over the one who is actively trying to make it worse. Hidin Biden is honestly a compliment in the current climate when the alternative is spreading a deadly virus.
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@Greyparrot
The right just wants to dump more guns into the mix and see what happens.
are you denying that right wing policies constantly work to prevent any kind of meaningful gun control? Your link doesn't seem to dispute what I said in any way at all. It is just yet another distraction.
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@ILikePie5
Glad we agree that there is no evidence right now that this is a Russian disinformation campaign. I didn’t know you could predict future.
we know that a republican politician says there isn't. We also know that the most likely explanation is that it is a Russian disinformation campaign.
How is it biased to lay out a fact that there is no evidence of it being a Russian disinformation campaign lol.
to comment on an ongoing investigation before it is completed to benefit your own political faction? Yeah, that is super biased.
If the FBI thought DNI was lying then they would say it. The fact they didn’t shows they agree.
what? no they wouldn't. The FBI is not supposed to comment on ongoing investigations. That would make them as guilty of political game playing as right wing politicians like to say they are.
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@Greyparrot
Handguns serve a useful purpose in self defense.Citation please.
I don't understand. Citation for what? That handguns can be used for self defense?
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@Greyparrot
It's almost like the left does not actually care about gun deaths.
no, the left wants to respect people's right to defend themselves while actively curbing gun deaths. The right just wants to dump more guns into the mix and see what happens.
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@ILikePie5
Handguns kill more people but assault weapons should be banned. Nice logic my friend. You’re just undercutting yourself
not at all. Handguns serve a useful purpose in self defense. So while regulations and controls are definitely needed to try to keep them out of the hands of criminals and ensuring their owners are properly trained in how to use them and store them safely, banning them is not an ideal solution.
ARs serve no useful purpose. A shotgun or handgun would do an equally good job in defending yourself or your home. but they do an extremely effective job in gunning down large crowds of people. Therefore banning ARs has virtually no down side, but a big upside.
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@Greyparrot
Count the orange semicircles on this graph. Let me know when you hit 1000.
because they aren't counting mass shootings. They are only counting shootings which result in 4 or more deaths. If you shoot 10 people but only 2 die, that is still a mass shooting. but that graph wouldn;t show it.
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@ILikePie5
Lack of evidence means no evidence genius.
true, but you don't seem to understand. lets a say a women is murdered and the husband had means, motive and opportunity. But there is no direct evidence to prove he did it. Saying there is no evidence he did it is an accurate statement. But it would also be an accurate statement to say that a crime was committed and the husband is the prime suspect. It depends on how you want to spin the available facts.
The story about how Giuliani got this info is super suspicious and highly unlikely. he has admitted to working with a known Russian operative. he has means, motive and opportunity. So while the FBI may not evidence the Russians gave him the info, it is still the most likely conclusion. It has all the hallmarks of a russian intelligence operation and the version given by Giuliani makes little sense.
So DNI lied and the FBI lied? Ok dude, keep living in your bubble
I didn't say he lied. I said he presented information in a biased way. Although he might have lied, it is certainly possible. The FBI just said they had nothing to add. Which given it is an ongoing investigation is exactly what they are supposed to say.
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@ILikePie5
man, you are really bringing the lies today.... I specifically said I am not talking about banning all guns. How did you take that and somehow read the exact opposite?Nice dodge. Why is the issue about ARs when Handguns kill more people? Logically you should be talking about banning handguns no?
again, you are attempting to misdirect. I am talking about assault weapons. I never said handguns need to be banned. They need much better regulation though.
Logically according to you it would stop killing right?
it would, yes. but i understand that people also need to be able to defend themselves. So if we can get better results with regulation, then that is the better option.
ARs have been used in hundreds, if not thousands, of mass shootings.You’re actually high lmao
there have been over 2300 mass shootings in the last 7 years in america. I can't guarentee how many have been ARs though. I couldn't find stats for it. if you extrapolate that back to the 80's, then hundreds is a pretty good bet. Thousands is possible.
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@Greyparrot
Just curious, how many American mass shootings with an ar-15 happened in your lifetime?
not sure. there have been about 2,331 mass shootings since 2013. The sources that do show a breakdown by weapon use the much more restrictive definition (requiring at least 4 people to have died instead of 4 people having been shot). Which to me is the definition of a mass killing, not mass shooting.
So unfortunately I can't seem to find those numbers. the numbers using the restrictive definition say about 10% of mass shootings used an assault rifle. If that holds true using the better definition of mass shooting (which i have no evidence that it does), then it would be about 200 mass shootings with ARs in the last 7 years. which again i do not know that for sure. How many were done with an AR-15 specifically, no idea. but since my objection to assault rifles is not limited to that one model of gun, i'm not sure how it would be relevant.
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@SirAnonymous
No, those stats don't say that. What they do say is that guns are used to prevent crimes more than they are used to commit crimes. In other words, they reduce crime.
your stats don't say that either. Attempting the crime, is a crime. So by the time the gun was used, there was already a crime. So no, it does not reduce crime.
Which makes it even better, since no one gets hurt if the criminal just decides not to mess with that person.
ok. but that means that restrictions on mag sizes would have no negative effect, but still have a positive effect. that's a win-win.
At which point a limit on the magazine size wouldn't negatively impact survival of victims very much at all.True, but I was trying to make a point about guns in general with that stat, not make a point specifically about magazines. Sorry if I confused you there.
ok. but no one is talking about banning all guns. I am talking about making useful regulation to control what kinds of guns and gun mods are available. Thus you can reduce the risks, but people would still be able to defend themselves in a legitimate scenario.
well, Canada has strict controls on this and there doesn't seem to be any issue with people defending themselves.You just defended your sweeping assertions with yet another sweeping assertion. What data to you have to back up your claims?
again, most countries don't track the number of shots a victim took to defend themselves. But canada has strict rules about magazine size and both their general death by guns per 100,000 and homicide by guns per 100,000 are considerably lower than the US. If mag size limits had a significant negative effect on people defending themselves, this shouldn't be true.
Notice something about these incidents: the vast majority of them have fewer than three deaths. In other words, they don't meet the federal standard for a mass killing,
you misread. I said "mass shooting" not "mass killing". if 4 or more people are shot, that is a mass shooting.
The article you linked gets away with this by using a sleight of hand. They use the term mass shooting, which has no standard definition (the definition the source used is four or more people, not including the shooter, being shot). However, a lot of people, including myself, use mass shooting and mass killing as synonyms, even though they aren't.
so your objection is that you are confusing shooting and killing?
Thus, the article gives the impression that there are mass killings every day, even though that isn't the case.
no it doesn't. You are simply using the wrong term in an attempt to lower the number of incidents that would qualify. If 4 people are being shot, that is obviously a very serious incident even if most of them end up surviving.
I wasn't aware the US had ever had a ban on high capacity magazines. could you provide more information on what ban you are referring to?"For example, in the United States, the now-expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 included limits regarding magazines that could hold more than ten rounds."
thank you for the information. Sadly, the assault weapons ban was far too limited. for it to apply a gun must have at least two additional characteristics, such as a flash suppressor or a folding stock, to be banned. So their weapons, one of which was a carbine with a 50 round mag, were totally legal.
what? why? who is having large scale shootouts with gangs?Firstly, I never said anything about large-scale shoot-outs. One person vs. a gang doesn't imply a large-scale shoot-out. Secondly, "these estimates suggest that gang-related homicides typically accounted for around 13 percent of all homicides annually."
ok. well we would all still be much better off if the gang and the victim didn't have high capacity mags. There would be alot less death.
Also, those numbers don't include violent crimes committed by multiple assailants who weren't part of a gang, which would also make the numbers go up. So yes, there are times when a high-capacity magazine is needed for self-defense.
i reject the premise that you would need a high capacity mag to defend yourself in these scenarios.
the majority of these are 15 or fewer people getting shot and about half are 10 or fewer, counting the injured. Depending on how good a shot the killer is, he'll only have to reload once or twice, if at all.
that seems to be a significant assumption. you say 15 people get shot, so it must only be 15 shots. There is no reason to think that is true. in the real world, most people do not have perfect accuracy and/or would fire more than 1 shot per person they are shooting at. in a real world scenario, a shooter is likely to need multiple 5 round mags in order to shoot 15 people slowing him down and reducing his effectiveness.
Thus, this ban isn't going to save huge numbers of people. You might reach a few dozen. That doesn't compare well to the number of times a high-capacity magazine could potentially save people.
you haven't established high capacity mags ever save anyone. It is well established that high capacity mags are used to kill alot of people though.
No, it isn't. If banning various types of guns only results in the same number of people dying from other weapons, zero lives have been saved. You've just changed how those people were killed, which is an exercise in futility.
again, you are assuming that forcing them to change weapons has no effect on how many people die. If they have a grenade launcher they will kill alot more people than with an assault rifle. If they have knife they will kill alot less people than with an AR. You will never be able to stop crazy or violent people entirely, but by limiting the availability of deadly weapons you can reduce the level of violence they are able to carry out.
If we were to take your argument to it's concussion, then we should legalize all automatic weapons, belt fed weapons, flame throwers, etc. I mean if limiting the weapons isn't helpful, then everyone should just be armed to the teeth right?
But that is not an argument for allowing people to stockpile killing machines designed to gun down lots of people very quicklyThat's not what AR-15s were designed for, but that's a minor point.
AR 15's were designed as an infantry weapon. They also clearly had the civilian market in mind as well, but that doesn't change the fact that the design was a pitch for military use.
In reality, dangerous weapons are only an issue if fewer people die in the absence of those weapons. However, if people just get killed by maniacs driving through crowds instead, then banning those dangerous weapons hasn't saved anyone, and you've taken away people's rights for nothing.
this argument doesn't seem to have much merit. Essentially your argument is we should do nothing to attempt to prevent people from getting deadly weapons because they will just get them anyway. So the extension of that argument is that we should legalize all weapons. Grenade launchers and tactical nuclear weapons for all I guess.
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@Greyparrot
They want to ban AR 15 cause they look scary, not because they want to reduce gun deaths.
nope. I want to ban ARs because they are regularly used in mass shootings.
Pretty sure homemade crockpot bombs were illegal in Boston too.They didn't go around confiscating and registering crockpots and limiting import and manufacture of crockpots after the Boston Bombing.Guess crockpots do not look as scary as an ar-15
one crockpot was used in a bomb. ARs have been used in hundreds, if not thousands, of mass shootings. Comparing the 2 is very silly.
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@ILikePie5
So you want to ban ARs and Handguns? Cause if they’re parallel they’d have the same solution right ?
man, you are really bringing the lies today.... I specifically said I am not talking about banning all guns. How did you take that and somehow read the exact opposite?
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@ILikePie5
DNI Ratcliffe said 2 days ago it wasn’t. FBI spokeswoman said “we have nothing to add at this time to the October 19th public statement by the Director of National Intelligence about the available actionable intelligence.”
basically, he said that they didn't have evidence it was russian misinformation. That doesn't mean it isn't russian misinformation, just that the evidence hasn't been found yet. He shouldn't have made a statement at all until they had evidence one way or the other.
just to provide some context. DNI Ratcliffe is not an impartial intelligence official. He is a republican politician and political appointee by trump. He was originally rejected for the job of DNI because it was felt by many in the intelligence community that he would politicize the office and that he had lied about his background in his application for the job.
So, coming from a man who was rejected for this exact job because he would politicize it and lied about stuff, why would we take him at his word when he is busy politicizing his job, exactly as intelligence officials said he would?
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@ILikePie5
Handguns kill more than ARsThe end goal is banning guns. If your problem was stopping deaths you’d ban handguns not ARs
ok, but those are sort of parallel issues. I have already said that. More control is needed on handguns too. But no, the end goal is not to ban all guns. That is a lie the NRA and fox news tell people to scare them.
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@ILikePie5
Well actually DNI, FBI, and DOJ said it wasn’t a Russian disinformation campaign so 🤷♂️
please provide a source for that. more than 50 former senior intelligence service members have signed a letter saying that this is exactly how the russians would do it. So where exactly did anyone say that it wasn't?
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@ILikePie5
Moving the line to banning all guns. Got it.
no one has said they want to ban all guns. that is a lie. I certainly don't want that. We need gun control, not outright bans. Hunting rifles and shotguns are things that people need for hunting or defending their home. But they absolutely do not need an AR to do that.
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@ILikePie5
Banning guns is inherently unconstitutional my friend, and that’s where this is headed
how do you figure? lots of weapons are banned. The US government already picks and chooses which weapons are legal and which aren't. We are just talking about moving that line.
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@SirAnonymous
Given that, according to the study, guns are used more frequently to stop criminals than to commit crime, it seems reasonable to believe that they save more than they kill.
your stats don't say that though. They say they are used by victims as often as they are used by criminals. but that crime could be trespassing, or vandalism, or a bar fight. In which case no one was particularly likely to die if the victim didn't have a gun.
Additionally, those stats don't say how often the gun was even fired in self defense. The presence of a gun might be enough to deter the crime. At which point a limit on the magazine size wouldn't negatively impact survival of victims very much at all.
Based on what? It's easy to make sweeping assertions, but what are those assertions based on?
well, Canada has strict controls on this and there doesn't seem to be any issue with people defending themselves.
Secondly, even if most people don't need that many rounds, that implies that some people still do. Even though that might be relatively uncommon, mass shootings are also relatively uncommon.
What defines uncommon? There is more than 1 mass shooting per day in america. Here is an article about it. There were 90 mass shootings in June alone. If something happens every day, it isn't uncommon.
If someone shoots a mass shooter, he might hit a few people by accident; how many people could the mass shooter have killed if he wasn't stopped?
in a mass shooting scenario, having people returning fire with automatic weapons seems like it is much more likely to cause problems than to resolve the issue.
And again, what's the data on this issue? How common are deaths or injuries due to crossfire?
I don't believe this kind of research is done. The government needs to fund extensive research into this topic to better answer these questions.
Furthermore, how many lives would actually be saved in an individual mass shooting by a "high-capacity" magazine ban? Remember, the Columbine massacre happened when there was such a ban. How many lives did that ban save then?
I wasn't aware the US had ever had a ban on high capacity magazines. could you provide more information on what ban you are referring to?
Gang violence is common in America. Facing multiple criminal assailants is nothing new. Having a magazine large enough to deal with those threats would save lives.
what? why? who is having large scale shootouts with gangs? We would be much better off if those gangs couldn't access high capacity weapons than with civilians shooting automatic weapons back at them.
Do you know how long that actually takes? Here's some guy reloading his AR-15. Switching out the magazine took 2-3 seconds, and there are only 4-5 seconds between his last shot on the first mag and his first shot on the second mag.
ok, so lets time this out. he fires 5 shots in about a second. then takes 3 seconds to reload. fires another 5 rounds in a second. reloads in 3 seconds. fires another 5 rounds in a second.
he fires 15 rounds in about 9 seconds. With a 30 round mag, he could fire all 30 in half that time. We are talking about doubling, maybe even tripling the amount of time it takes to fire the same number of shots. When you take into account the killer having to manage lots of mags, it could be even more than that (as he fumbles to find his 6th five round mag). That is a significant reduction in fire power.
That would only be a minor inconvenience to a mass shooter. Furthermore, as you try to make it harder for mass murderers to use guns, they will start using other methods. How many were killed at the Boston Marathon from pressure cooker bombs, of all things? And for criminals too dumb to build one of those, they could just follow the example of some lunatic in France who killed 84 people by simply driving a large truck into a crowd.
this is a super weak argument. there will always be other weapons. you can't ban kitchen knives. But that is not an argument for allowing people to stockpile killing machines designed to gun down lots of people very quickly. We should still do what we can to keep dangerous weapons out of people's hands.
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@Greyparrot
Nobody said Biden lying to the people about placing his son in a position to funnel money to him was criminal.The price to pay for such actions is in the court of public elections.
pretty much just what oromagi said. But I will add that there is absolutely no evidence Joe was in any way involved in Hunter getting that job. There is no evidence Joe even had any contact or communication about the details of that job. It is also baseless allegations.
Trump on the other hand, we know is guilty of using his position to enrich himself and his children. So why are you so hung up on an allegation, which isn't even illegal, that has no evidence to support it; but you have no issue with Trump funneling money to himself and his children?
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@Sum1hugme
Well what if I'm the peaceful owner of multiple AK-47 and variant rifles. Should the government send cops to physically come take my rifles away from me even though I own them?
depends on what the law is. You could design the system to grandfather in existing weapons. You could design the law to allow them to keep them, but only if they modify them to only be capable of semi auto fire. There are different paths you could take.
but again, let me re-frame it. What if I owned a cocaine factory before cocaine was illegal. Should i be allowed to continue to produce it because i was doing it before it was illegal?
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@Greyparrot
Again, you don't care about Black Lives.Stop whitesplaining why 10 kids are more important.
this is a very common attempt at deflection the right loves to use.
IE "issue 1 isn't important because look how serious issue 2 is. Why are you such a monster that you don't care about issue 2?"
You want to change topic and make it seem like somehow I am at fault for not discussing your preferred topic. As a society, we should be capable of handling multiple issues. There is no reason we can't get mass shootings better under control as well as day to day gun crime.
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@Greyparrot
Why are 10 kids killed with an AR-15 worth more than 9000 black-skinned people killed with handguns?Don't Black Lives matter to you anymore? Why are they worth less to you?
This doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I was talking about. I was talking about ARs and large capacity mags. You are talking about handguns. they are related, but different topics. I also believe much more regulation is needed for handguns too, but I wasn't talking about that.
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@Greyparrot
Ukraine won't be able to save Biden this time.
well since it never has before, that sentence makes no sense. Neither Joe nor Hunter are under any legitimate suspicion of criminal acts in or relating to Ukraine.
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You know the left-wing nations you use as examples of good social democracies? They all used to be monarchies or even Fascist states and gradually shifted to the left by several electoral shifts forcing the 'center' the parties had to appeal to, towards the left. This was not achieved by being complacent like a stroppy brat going 'bitch-ass leader you better give me what I want right now or I will let the worse party take over this nation!' like a toddler may do when they don't get the toy they ideally wanted from a selection.
most of those countries aren't locked into a 2 party system. So when the "centrist" parties do shitty stuff, they can show their anger by voting for a further left wing party. America is locked into a 2 party system. The democrats have internalized the message that the left can be completely ignored because they have no choice. All they have to do is be a bit less shitty than the republicans and virtue signal. Then they only have to win over the right wing people they can syphon off from the republicans. Since the left always caves and votes for them anyway, this is a successful strategy. But it is one that guarantees permanent corrupt, right wing rule. Until the democrats learn that ignoring the left will bring electoral defeat, they will keep doing it forever.
And you are right, it wasn't achieved by being complacent. It was achieved by forcing politicians to do what you want, or forcing them to lose their job. Which is exactly what the left needs to do.
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@lady3keys
It is going to be a shitshow alright. Unless Biden wins by a landslide, Trump will scream "FRAUDULENT BALLOTS"
it might be worse than you think. Democrats are more likely to take the pandemic seriously than republicans. So more democrats are likely to use mail in ballots. Which means that on election night trump might be winning, but then the mail in ballots get counted and he he loses. He will try to use that as evidence of fraud. And millions of his cult followers will believe it.
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@Greyparrot
Lol, even Andrew Bates wasn't sure if the story was true until he "checked the schedules"Too funny.
honestly, parts of the info are probably accurate. But that is because Giuliani has been working with a known russian asset (Andriy Derkach) and that is likely where he got the info. The computer repair crap is probably just a story to try to explain how they got the info and hide russian involvement.
luckily, the entire scheme seems to be backfiring.
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@SirAnonymous
Yeah, I get that part. I don't question that that would be how such a law would work. What I'm trying to figure out is the logic behind such a law. In this theoretical world, various guns and features thereof are banned to protect people. But if some criminal is going after me, I don't see how my life is being protected if the tool that could save my life is illegal.
because the tool itself is dangerous. The tool itself is costing people their lives. Having a gunman able to fire off 30 rounds in a matter of seconds gets people killed. Most people don't, or shouldn't need that many rounds for self defense. If you are firing 30 rounds at someone in "self defense" then there is probably a pretty good chance of other people getting caught in the crossfire anyway.
how many scenarios actually come up where someone needs to be able to fire a dozen rounds at someone to protect themselves? Probably not very many. \
Maybe I don't need more than 5 bullets for hunting, but that's not life or death. If I need 6 bullets for self-defense, then I guess I die in the name of saving lives?
your question is kind of messed up. Basically, you are saying someone in the rare circumstance where they needed a large mag for self defense should die so that dozens of potential victims in mass shootings can live. The answer is yes. We should to what we can to reduce the numbers of deaths. There might be 1 or 2 cases where someone might die who otherwise would live (though i'm not convinced that is true), but there would definitely be lots of cases where people successfully survive a mass shooting because the gunman had to stop and reload after a few shots.
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