BrotherL0v3 @ BrotherL0v3 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Or just laser death ray at least two transphobes before you get caught.

I still stand by this being a clear indication of being unfit for gun ownership though.

I appreciate that you've been a good faith interlocutor so far, but I wanna push back on this just a little more.

The current rules governing SBRs in the United States were established in the 1930s in anticipation of an outright ban on handguns. The thought was that "sawed-off" or short-barreled rifles would be a way for people to circumvent the ban. And, because the law enforcement thinking at the time was distinctly classist, the mechanism for keeping these guns out of the hands of criminals was not an outright ban but a ludicrously high tax, in the neighborhood of $4500 in today's money.

But that ban on pistols never materialized. So now, we're left with a nearly 100 year old vestigial law that doesn't really serve much of a purpose: short-barreled rifles aren't any more deadly than full-length rifles (they tend to fire the same bullet louder and slower), and they aren't any more concealable than handguns. There really isn't an obvious public good that is served by these laws, and their enforcement gives away that the ATF understands that on some level: basically no one is ever charged for just having an unregistered SBR, it's almost always a rider-on to a different crime or an excuse for a cop to fuck you up if they don't like you.

Enter pistol braces. Ostensibly, they are a device that assists shooters that have lost the use of one of their hands to stabilize an AR pistol with the forearm of their one good hand (and to be clear, they serve that purpose well). However, some people notice that they happen to be shaped in a way that provides a lot of the function that a stock would, and begin using them on AR pistols as a way of getting the ergonomics and aesthetics of an SBR without paying the additional tax and waiting months for approval.

And for a really long time, the ATF was okay with this. Pistol braces were specifically allowed. That was, until a few years ago, the ATF decided to... Change their mind? "Re-interpret" existing rules was I think what officially happened. No new laws were passed, no democratic process took place, and no clear and present danger was being addressed. They just kinda decided "Hey these are illegal now, you have X days to comply".

Does aquiescing to that "interpretation change" have anything to do with being a responsible gun owner? To my mind, whether someone complies with that or not says more about their obideience to authority / fear of consequences than it does their responsibility or danger to society. There is no inherent moral good to following the law, and history is filled with responsible people who flout pointless or harmful laws.

The estimates for the number of pistol braces out there ranged from 3 million on the low end, to 40 million on the high end. During the grace period to register braced firearms as SBRs without having to pay the tax stamp, the ATF received 255,162 applications to do so.

Even if we take the low number & account for folks destroying or converting their firearms, we can reasonably estimate a rate of non-compliance in the hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. There is a very real possibility that arresting all those people would literally double the already ludicrous US prison population overnight. In a country that already has a worryingly militarized police force, I cannot imagine the mass arrest of millions of armed people will reduce gun violence.

Ultimately, guns are not very complicated machines. I'm making a semi-automatic rifle in my home office right now out of stuff you can get at a hardware store & some 3D printed parts, and I'm amazed at how simple it all is.

A lot of proposed gun control feels like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Even states with hefty assault weapon bans like California and Maryland still have plenty of legal loopholes allowing people to own semi-automatic guns, and gun manufacturers are finding more all the time. I honestly think that anything short of straight up banning the sale of gunpowder will have a temporary at best effect on gun violence, and do less than nothing at worst.

The fact of the matter is that gun control bills at the federal level will cost a lot of political capital. A federal challenge to the 2nd amendment will rally conservatives in the same way that the recent overturning of Roe caused a surge for liberals. This is to say nothing about enforcement: it's a common position among gun owners that they would simply refuse to comply with a gun confiscation / surrender, and I believe a significant chunk of them would follow through with that. See the recent ATF rules about pistol braces for an example of mass non-compliance.

So, we can fight the uphill battle of gun control for perhaps marginal returns, or we can try to address the things that drive people to violence in the first place. And I'm not just saying "muh mental health" either; we need to address housing costs, healthcare costs, education costs, wages stagnating behind inflation, broken-windows policing, the war on drugs, the mainstreaming of far-right propoganda, the decay of public schooling, white supremacy, queerphobia, misogyny, climate change & doomerism, corporate personhood, and a fuckload of other things making people angry and desparate and hopeless enough to kill people & themselves.

I firmly believe that addressing the material conditions that create killers will prevent more murders than any gun control bill, especially in the USA.

Oh shit, I do that too! Never occurred to me to stand there and drip for a minute. 😅

Something you hear a lot from EMTs is that they take a lot of care not to make a medical emergency worse by adding to the number of victims. "Scene safety" is a big thing, the logic being that if you try to help someone in an unsafe way, you may end up just adding to the problem.

You'd think the same would apply to cops? Doing 75 in a 25 seems like the same kind of thing, especially in an area with pedestrians around. Doing 50 over to get to someone that needs help and hitting someone along the way isn't actually helping.

Oh, also:

Kandula’s death ignited outrage, especially after a recording from another officer’s body-worn camera surfaced last September, in which that officer laughed and suggested that Kandula’s life had “limited value” and the city should “just write a check”.

Jesus Christ, fuck the police.

Exactly this. If they are making the same product as a local team that generates the same revenue, you're just taking a bigger slice of their surplus value. In other words, exploiting them harder.

Stellaris! Very cool sci-fi strategy game.

Here is a head on view:

The drawing has a little bit of his halo behind his head.

The search warrant was for the Parmely Avenue residence, but it was issued for a person who hasn’t lived there in more than a year, Price said, sharing the search warrant left by police at the home.

[...]

Price said she learned police had visited the home at least five times within the past year. "The landlord even told [police] she had new tenants," she said.

This is after the article mentions that they only waited six seconds between knocking on the door and busting in.

If your police department shows this degree of incompetence executing a raid, it should have all its toys taken away. No more flashbangs, no more SWAT gear, no fancy guns. You get the wrong address, you hurt an innocent person, you fail to identify yourselves, you lose privileges. Hell, I seriously question whether they need most of that shit in the first place.

I legitimately believe that a disturbingly high number of these raids that go wrong happen because the cops want to play with with their shiny new equipment.

While NFA items are a different story, you're generally allowed to manufacture anything you could legally buy in a store. So no suppressors / SBRs / destructive devices without the appropriate paperwork & tax stamps, no machine guns without all that and a time machine, and no fun allowed if you're a prohibited person. Other than that, there's nothing* stopping you from printing, say, a semi-automatic rifle with a 16 inch barrel or a glock frame.

*Federally. Also, I am a dumbass and not a lawyer, do your own research.

I mean, good on her for being anti-war and wanting to release political prisoners I guess? I have no clue what she was expecting though. Trying to run against a dictator in a sham election seems like maybe not the best way to effect political change, not to mention dangerous.

Relevant XKCD

I'm glad to see this line of thinking in this thread, even if the "Take 'em all" sentiment seems to be more popular. Over the last 40ish years, gun ownership has slowly trended downwards.

The fact of the matter is, healthy & happy people tend not to shoot themselves or others. Depressed, desparate, jaded, and angry people are the ones out there abusing their 2A rights. Taking away their guns may stop them from using them on people, but it doesn't feel like a complete solution: you still have people who were unstable enough to commit murder /suicide out there.

I admit I have no data to support this next idea, but my gut feeling is that you could swap the gun laws & density of the US and one of those European coutries we're always compared to, and the rates of overall violent crime / suicide would not change that drastically.

GET IN HERE BOYS, KONSI IS BACK

Java. It's familiar, it's the one I use most at my job, and I'm not in love with any other language enough to choose something less pragmatic.

I was a weird 16 year old, staying up too late on summer vacation of 2011. I had decided that asking people their favorite dinosaur was the ultimate conversation starter, and had a working theory that the more unusual their answer was, the more interesting the conversation would be. People who said "T-Rex" were lame, but "Iguanadon" would be cool, something like that.

Well, she said "Pachycephalosaurus", which was the first one of the night I had to look up. Naturally, I was enthralled.

We talked into the wee hours of the morning, where she (being a fellow dumb teenager) sent me her Facebook profile. Before clicking, I had decided that I would look but ultimately not accept her friend request, because stranger danger and all. But when I checked out her page, it turned out we had a mutual friend! A guy we both knew had started high school with her, and moved up the coast halfway through and was currently going to my high school.

That was good enough for me, and I accepted her friend request. July 7th, 2011, around 3am.

From there, we quickly turned flirty and started talking all the time. We weren't anything official, but I told her I loved her within a couple weeks. One problem though: she was over 400 miles away, and I was still in school with no license.

To make a long story short, we were flirty on and off for the next three years until 2014, where we both decided "fuck it" and jumped into the special hell that is long distance dating together. I got to see her in person December 14th of that year after working at a grocery store while finishing up my associate's degree to make enough money for a train ticket, and she was my first kiss.

Anyway, college sucked and long distance dating sucks even when it's the right person. Fast-forward to 2020 when I finally have a car & some degree of financial stability, I moved 400 miles away to live with her & haven't looked back. Put a ring on her finger March of 2021, and married her on the beach last weekend after knowing her for twelve years. She is currently snoring gracefully in bed next to me. 🥰

End of an era. I met my wife on Omegle.

There are plenty of gun laws out there that a reasonable person could see merit in challenging: rules about short-barrel rifles / braces & pot smokers not being able to own guns probably aren't saving any lives.

The fact that this is the one they go after is just such a demonstration of malintent. There's good evidence for a relationship between domestic violence and mass shooters.

This should be a bi-partisan slam-dunk. Minimally invasive to law-abiding gun owners, gets guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. What public good is served in challenging it?

Because, goddammit, a better world is possible! A lot of the time shit sucks and everything is expensive and I wanna just go to bed and never wake up.

But most of my problems are problems millions or even billions of other people struggle with, and those don't get solved by opting out of life.

What's more, those problems are man-made. They're the result of systems designed by mortal men just like me.

So, I stay alive. Because the only way to out-vote, out-number, overpower, and / or annihilate those bastards is to be alive.