partial_accumen @ partial_accumen @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Couldn't you write your essay tearing down the trump administration, not get the job, then immediately have standing to sue the government for 1st Amendment violation?

I agree with you, which is why I think that element of the law is effective.

What is your definition of your proposed "ban semi-auto rifles"? In other words, what is a rifle that is not semi-automatic?

Not $200B no. Here's the list of total dollars, but no data on effectiveness. Notice Bill is already on this list while alive in the #2 spot:

source

Best case scenario with the honest man: he does nothing and I starve to death. Worst case scenario with the lying man: I starve to death anyway. May as well try changing things.

With the lying man, as in my example, you won't starve to death, you'll die from exposure long before you die of starvation. If you're seeing dying much sooner as direct result of his actions as an equal outcome, I'm not sure what to tell you.

At least the lying man admits there’s a fucking problem.

He's not admitting there's a problem, he saying whatever he thinks you want to hear to give him your vote. This man stiffed his own employees and contractors on a regular basis. On what evidence in his entire life, did you arrive at the conclusion that rich donald trump wanted to do anything at all to improve the life of people like us? Not words. Actions.

We don't have to speak in theoreticals though. trump won. Are you glad he got voted in? Is your life better now? Or is this now worse than under Biden?

That seems like an awfully fringe and roundabout improvement for a law that ruins the fun for everyone else.

Ruining the fun? That seems to be an incredibly weak argument for gun proliferation. I can see an argument for strong 2nd Amendment proponents as the Constitution grants rights and freedoms, and restrictions on those granted in the Constitution could be a pathway to a bad place. However, I can also see an argument that the evolution of firearms has outpaced our society's safe use of modern firearms and that the freedom of victims of gun violence are also having their even stronger Constitutional rights restricted and spirit of our nation with the Declaration's "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". In this conversation I'm not advocating a position either way, but I can see the valid arguments on both sides.

In neither one of those is "ruining" the fun" even a fraction of a thought to consider. You do you though.

Have a good night.

You’d think that if someone was about to slaughter as many people as possible they wouldn’t really be to worried about a 10-round mag law.

You're missing the point of these laws entirely. No one is saying that passing a law like this is going to remove every possible avenue for someone to get the most destructive gun on the planet and do the most damage possible.

What these laws are intended to do is make it less likely someone will have access to the most destructive gun on the planet. If someone plans multiple years ahead, they can go to the far ends of the Earth to get the most destructive gun possible. However, if they got pissed off at their boss that morning and decide to commit this kind of crime they'll only have wants available to that morning. If they were a legal gun owner when the day started, that means they'll only have 10 round magazines at most. Even if they drive to the local store nearby, they'd only be able to buy more 10 round magazines.

Lets even say that higher capacity magazines are available in the next state over. That may mean hours of planning and travel just to get to the other state to get the high capacity magazines, then all the time it takes to get back home to commit their crime. That's a lot of time for someone to consider what they're doing, the impact it will have on others, and even their own lives.

Will some still do it with all of that planning and bother needed? Yes. Will everyone? Doubtful.

If I’m starving to death, and the most trustworthy man in the world says “I will do nothing to help you” while the most dishonest man in the world (Donald Trump) says “I will shower you with more food than you have ever seen in your life” I’m going to take my chances with the dishonest man. Maybe the lie is how much but there will still be something. Better than a guaranteed nothing.

Except its not a "better than a guaranteed nothing". The liar didn't just not shower you with food, he stripped you of what little clothing you had left, and threw you out in the desert to die faster, and he even has a history of that, so its not like you didn't know the liar was capable of it.

It doesn't ban the model. It bans a whole bunch of criteria that the model has, and many other guns do too. I'm not saying its impossible to skirt this one legally, but reading the law I'm not seeing a way to have a legal gun that is equally lethal.

So this just bans that “style” of rifle? Someone can just go buy some other semi-automatic rifle that doesn’t look as imposing or whatever but will still kill a person just as dead?

According the language of the actual law the answer is either "no" or "not really, no". The law calls out a couple dozen aspects of firearms that precludes most of the "style" concerns. The biggest one is a limit on magazines only containing a maximum 10 rounds. While, yes, 10 rounds can still do lots of damage, it requires more frequent reloading, more chances for error, greater amount of encumbrance of the shooter. Assuming a shooter was using a gun that complied with this law, it would allow more opportunities to intervene or for people to get away.

“assault weapons” are a nebulous concept. that law sounds like it was closely tailored to match the AR-15 and its clones, since that’s the closest definition anyone can agree on. but it’s not like thumb position, stock design etc. make the AR-15 more lethal than other rifles.

I think you missed the point of my post. The law is the opposite of what you said. Its NOT the nebulous concept. In the language of the law (which I linked) they have all kinds of criteria that apply to lots of guns that aren't and don't look like the AR-15 platform.

why don’t they just ban semi-auto rifles?

Honestly, that legislation is what makes more sense to me if thats what they're going for. I'd modify your language slight to be "single action", instead of non "semi automatic".

I've heard statements before the "assault weapons" bans are pretty weak in their description and can easily be skirted with mild modifications rendering a gun no longer meeting the definition. I got curious what Maryland's law text said. I found it here: link

I'll say that the law as written is very detailed with its criteria for what is banned including even minor items like have a threaded barrel such as one would need to mount a flash suppressor. They also go through many iterations of descriptions of magazine size, detachabilty, and thumb hole position.

Just curiosity in the spirit of my original question (guns that would be legal), but still likely run afoul of the spirit (but not the letter of this law), I found this one:

Franklin Armory F17

Its rare apparently, but "the Franklin Armory F17 is the only semi-auto 17 Winchester Super Mag available today."

Is it not the voters fault though?

It’s the fault of the Democrats

...and...

You also cannot tell voters who’ve been getting poorer while you’ve ruled that you won’t change anything,

The opponent promised all kinds of things to voters who had been getting poorer, most of those promises were straight up fantasy, while others were distorted mistruths.

In your mind, do you think voters are free from have any responsibility for critical thinking? If a known liar is lying to you and you take action supporting those lies, should you be responsible when the lies are indeed shown to be lies?

and definitely shouldn’t tell them to be joyful about it.

This is the second time you've used this exact same language. Can you cite the source where you're saying Democrats told people they should be joyful?

If you're looking for an honest-to-goodness running on C64 hardware FPS experience that is as close to Wolfenstein 3D/Doom that we've seen so far, there is a really impressive demo from jimi9757 where he made a ray casting engine for c64. You can see that here.

Perhaps even more impressive is he made a version for the Commodore PET too.

and you’re taught the illegitimacy of Malcolm X’ ideology and the Nation of Islam on purpose.

I'll say mostly yes, but there was one thing in my school textbooks that contradicted that narrative. It was this picture of Malcolm X and Dr. King:

I felt I got a semi-decent education in public schools about the Civil Rights era hitting the highlights of:

• Rosa Parks/Bus boycott
• Lunch counter sit ins
• Dr King's speeches and approaches of non-violent protest
• March on Selma + Edmund Pettus Bridge
• Brown V Board of Education
• Little Rock Nine

With all of that picture of Malcolm X and Dr. King said something to me that words in the textbook never did. Dr. King, the man who preached non-violence and moved the USA forward to a better future chose to meet with Malcolm X. Malcolm X could not have been "all bad" or illegitimate if Dr. King wanted to interact with him. Further, after seeing pictures and film from Bloody Sunday (Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing), Malcolm X's actions made much more sense.

If you're into computing history, it isn't even so much the power of the CPU (but that was certainly one bit). It had to do with how different computer architectures wrote to the screen. We take it for granted today with modern computing, but back then computer designers had to make trade off decisions to improve one area while sacrificing functionality in another. It was the age of sprites and many features were put in to handle more sprites, or more on the screen at once, or how fast you could cycle between them, or their color palette depth, or resolution. Not a single bit of that helped Wolfenstein 3D (Doom's predecessor). 3D graphics FPV like Wolfenstein and Doom changed computing forever, and many systems (like Commodore) were left behind. Even early Macintosh computers struggled with 3D FPV games.

So even Amiga and early Macs were far more powerful than c65 CPUs, but still struggled in 3D FPV.

Having recently started doing lightweight programming on my c64 this was very questionable to me, especially considering the Amiga (the much more powerful followon to c64 couldn't even get close to this level of performance).

Following the mastadon link revealed the secret:

"@electron_greg This is incredibly impressive! What kind of wizardry is this? There's no way this is running on a stock C64. I assume it's using an accelerator of some kind but I don't see anything sticking out of the cartridge port..."

"Correct. It is equipped with a "RAD" cartridge which is effectively a co-pro in the form of a RaspberryPi Zero."

So the heavy lifting is being done by the Raspberry Pi's ARM CPU, not the c64, which is I'm guessing is essentially being used as a fancy frame buffer to display the Raspberry Pi's output.

This is still REALLY impressive though to be able to interface the two this way, and I'm glad to see this. Well done electron_greg!

While that can certainly be true, I would say I've gained more empathy as I got older. I was never hateful, but I probably was more dismissive entering adulthood. I didn't understand what I had when I was younger and thought everyone should be able to do what I did and just didn't for some reason I didn't understand. Over time I realized how wrong I was. I saw what advantages I had that led me to where I was, and how many MANY people didn't have those same things, and that expecting them to have equal success was unrealistic and shameful on my part.

It is so easy for life to knock a human off course or keep them off course. An injury, addiction, an abusive family member, poverty, chronic illness, genetic disorder, political instability, bigotry, victim of crime, economic recession, or a natural disaster. Any one of these things and more can do it. I had little to no concept of these when I was younger. Growing up, meeting people, learning about the world, learning history made me much more open to others suffering and the desire to use what I have been lucky enough to have to help others, and recognize we, as a society, must help others. Its the only way we'll all survive. Divided we fall.

Success in life is 75% luck. Everything you control (dedication, tenacity, ambition, follow through, dependability) is in the first 25%. The remaining 75% is just luck that you have no control over. That doesn't mean you can slack on that first 25%, but even if you absolutely kill it on the first 25% you can still fail in life. I say this as someone that most would consider successful. Yes I worked hard to get where I am, but lots of people work far harder and have far less. I was born in the right place, with the right talents, in the right period in time/history, and with enough of the preferred genetics. Even had everything else been equal and I was born 20 years earlier or 20 years later, I wouldn't be nearly as successful.

It shouldn't be like this. Its not fair its like this, but this is reality.