Another Fucking Mass Shooting At US School

[Shadowy Man]

The point is it amounts to taking them with no proof of wrongdoing. Why does innocent until proven guilty not apply to gun owners?

The weapons are to be confiscated on a reasonable basis. Not every gun owner is going to trigger a red flag law, and gun owners need to be aware that their weapons will be confiscated if they appear to threaten the safety of the public. There are reasons why they impound the vehicles of drunk drivers, and those drivers need to pay storage fees to get their impounded vehicles back. If someone is making threats of violence, then that person should be prohibited from owning guns. Public health and safety regulations do restrict individual liberties by their very nature, so pointing out that somebody's rights are being restricted by a red flag law does not per se justify doing away with red flag laws. We still require people to drive safely and operate safe vehicles, even if driving erratically and driving an unsafe vehicle doesn't actually harm anyone.

Reasonable basis? The case I mentioned earlier was simply a name match with a name that wasn't remotely unique. And, more importantly, he had no ability to clear his name. I suppose you also approve of CPS taking the kid of the Florida Covid whistleblower for posting a meme?

How does your take on these two anecdotes have anything to do with the need for red flag laws? You can find anecdotes of people being treated poorly or charged incorrectly all the time, and the point has already been made that gun ownership comes with financial and safety risks that the owner is responsible for.

Every system will have its flaws, limitations, and abuses. So it obviously makes more sense to use the one that errs on the side of more dead schoolchildren than the one that separates people from their precious guns.

 

[Elixir]

You don’t have to be a criminal to have your “rights” truncated. If your eyesight goes bad you can lose your drivers license. Because it is likely that if you’re allowed to drive a car you have an elevated chance of hurting someone else.

I guess the founding fathers should have written the right to drive an automobile into the Constitution. Seems like a gross oversight on their part.

Driving an automobile into the Constitution is apparently the Republican agenda. I don’t think they question their right to do so.

 

[Toni]

You don’t have to be a criminal to have your “rights” truncated. If your eyesight goes bad you can lose your drivers license. Because it is likely that if you’re allowed to drive a car you have an elevated chance of hurting someone else.

True! I was merely commenting on the fact that bilby isn't an American and seems to have no plans to visit.

 

[Copernicus]

You don’t have to be a criminal to have your “rights” truncated. If your eyesight goes bad you can lose your drivers license. Because it is likely that if you’re allowed to drive a car you have an elevated chance of hurting someone else.

True! I was merely commenting on the fact that bilby isn't an American and seems to have no plans to visit.

I don't know why so many people are afraid to visit the US. The chances are good that you won't actually be shot, and you'll likely survive, if you are. Our hospitals are among the best in the world for treating gunshot wounds. It's true that they can be very expensive, but they are well worth the money.

In the latest shooting in Louisville, the young shooter (25 years old) selected the absolute favorite among mass killers--the AR-15--a week ago. Like so many gun owners, he was a law-abiding man who bought it all nice and legal a few days (April 4) before the shooting. The AR-15 is reportedly one of the most beloved sporting guns in the US, being owned by roughly 30% of legal gun owners. Unfortunately, there were no good AR-15 owners nearby when one of them decided to go rogue, so the police had to get to the scene first.

Kentucky is one of those states with a very advanced attitude towards guns. They no longer require a Concealed Carry Deadly Weapons (CCDW) permit, as they did in the past. So the 25-year old shooter just had to be over 21. This is a great convenience for gun owners in Kentucky, but the state does recommend that citizens still consider getting a CCDW permit, since other states may require these nuisance permits when they visit. And forget about foreign travel with your gun. Not worth the trouble.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

As a tourist destination, your safety is importance to us. It is one reason why America has one of the best hospital systems in the world. Our doctors and nurses successfully treat over 70,000 victims of gun shots every year. And of the remainder, over half of them were suicides so they didn't want to be saved anyway. While being saved from a gunshot wound(s) is beneficial, we understand that some people would prefer not to be shot at all. Thanks to our great American spirit, as long as you remain at least 1/4 mile (400 or so meters) from schools, churches, grocery stores, and country music festivals, your chances of being in a mass shooting drop notably. And with paramedics waiting 24/7 in case you do get shot, you can be rest assured that chances are you will probably not die during your visit to America.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The point is it amounts to taking them with no proof of wrongdoing. Why does innocent until proven guilty not apply to gun owners?

The weapons are to be confiscated on a reasonable basis. Not every gun owner is going to trigger a red flag law, and gun owners need to be aware that their weapons will be confiscated if they appear to threaten the safety of the public. There are reasons why they impound the vehicles of drunk drivers, and those drivers need to pay storage fees to get their impounded vehicles back. If someone is making threats of violence, then that person should be prohibited from owning guns. Public health and safety regulations do restrict individual liberties by their very nature, so pointing out that somebody's rights are being restricted by a red flag law does not per se justify doing away with red flag laws. We still require people to drive safely and operate safe vehicles, even if driving erratically and driving an unsafe vehicle doesn't actually harm anyone.

Reasonable basis? The case I mentioned earlier was simply a name match with a name that wasn't remotely unique. And, more importantly, he had no ability to clear his name. I suppose you also approve of CPS taking the kid of the Florida Covid whistleblower for posting a meme?

How does your take on these two anecdotes have anything to do with the need for red flag laws? You can find anecdotes of people being treated poorly or charged incorrectly all the time, and the point has already been made that gun ownership comes with financial and safety risks that the owner is responsible for.

The basic issue is that you're arguing the laws are fair and reasonable and I'm showing cases of them being neither. Just because you like the idea doesn't make any given implementation good. I am not opposed to the idea but I see it often being done horribly.

 

[Copernicus]

The point is it amounts to taking them with no proof of wrongdoing. Why does innocent until proven guilty not apply to gun owners?

The weapons are to be confiscated on a reasonable basis. Not every gun owner is going to trigger a red flag law, and gun owners need to be aware that their weapons will be confiscated if they appear to threaten the safety of the public. There are reasons why they impound the vehicles of drunk drivers, and those drivers need to pay storage fees to get their impounded vehicles back. If someone is making threats of violence, then that person should be prohibited from owning guns. Public health and safety regulations do restrict individual liberties by their very nature, so pointing out that somebody's rights are being restricted by a red flag law does not per se justify doing away with red flag laws. We still require people to drive safely and operate safe vehicles, even if driving erratically and driving an unsafe vehicle doesn't actually harm anyone.

Reasonable basis? The case I mentioned earlier was simply a name match with a name that wasn't remotely unique. And, more importantly, he had no ability to clear his name. I suppose you also approve of CPS taking the kid of the Florida Covid whistleblower for posting a meme?

How does your take on these two anecdotes have anything to do with the need for red flag laws? You can find anecdotes of people being treated poorly or charged incorrectly all the time, and the point has already been made that gun ownership comes with financial and safety risks that the owner is responsible for.

The basic issue is that you're arguing the laws are fair and reasonable and I'm showing cases of them being neither. Just because you like the idea doesn't make any given implementation good. I am not opposed to the idea but I see it often being done horribly.

That is an utterly irrelevant straw man argument. I never said that "any given implementation" would be good, did I? I never claimed that a red flag law would always lead to fair treatment by authorities or that no one would ever be wrongfully targeted. Even you admit that you are not opposed to the idea, which is to say that you concede my point. But then you start accusing me of favoring that the law be implemented horribly. What are you trying to say here? You may not trust the government to implement the law well, but what is your solution to that problem? To have no law at all, even though you don't oppose the idea of one????

Will you argue that we repeal laws against drunk driving because you discovered that somebody was accused who wasn't actually drunk?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The point is it amounts to taking them with no proof of wrongdoing. Why does innocent until proven guilty not apply to gun owners?

The weapons are to be confiscated on a reasonable basis. Not every gun owner is going to trigger a red flag law, and gun owners need to be aware that their weapons will be confiscated if they appear to threaten the safety of the public. There are reasons why they impound the vehicles of drunk drivers, and those drivers need to pay storage fees to get their impounded vehicles back. If someone is making threats of violence, then that person should be prohibited from owning guns. Public health and safety regulations do restrict individual liberties by their very nature, so pointing out that somebody's rights are being restricted by a red flag law does not per se justify doing away with red flag laws. We still require people to drive safely and operate safe vehicles, even if driving erratically and driving an unsafe vehicle doesn't actually harm anyone.

Reasonable basis? The case I mentioned earlier was simply a name match with a name that wasn't remotely unique. And, more importantly, he had no ability to clear his name. I suppose you also approve of CPS taking the kid of the Florida Covid whistleblower for posting a meme?

How does your take on these two anecdotes have anything to do with the need for red flag laws? You can find anecdotes of people being treated poorly or charged incorrectly all the time, and the point has already been made that gun ownership comes with financial and safety risks that the owner is responsible for.

The basic issue is that you're arguing the laws are fair and reasonable and I'm showing cases of them being neither. Just because you like the idea doesn't make any given implementation good. I am not opposed to the idea but I see it often being done horribly.

You see it often done horribly. You... as in you. You are party to this sort of thing, and at such a rate, that you can rip out an "often" to indicate the number of times you've personally witnessed it?

I don't believe that.

 

[Bomb#20]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

 

[Jarhyn]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

I think rather mostly they are motivated by a combination of "we covered for you in the confirmation hearings, we can as easily un-cover for you, so we own you now" and ideology.

 

[Copernicus]

If your assertion were accurate, firearms would exclusively belong to well-regulated militias. Laws are not overturned solely because they violate the Constitution; rather, they are overturned when a sufficient number of legislators and judges are financially incentivized to do so, or when the failure to adopt a particular law would result in significant financial losses for an industry or the government itself.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be kept away from such incentives by appointment to a position that there's no higher court to be promoted to from, that they won't be fired from, and that they don't have to run a reelection campaign for. Of course that doesn't always work (cough cough) but mostly they seem to be motivated by ideology.

Presidents and senators usually rely primarily on non-partisan organizations like the American Bar Association to rate legal qualifications. Trump and other partisan Republicans have come to rely almost solely on politically biased groups like the Heritage Foundation to assure that nominees will tend to base decisions more on politics than the law. That has had a big impact on decisions surrounding culture war issues like gun ownership, reproductive rights, racial discrimination, religion, and so forth.

See

Heritage Expert Helps Shape Supreme Court Nominee List​

 

[Patooka]

The basic issue is that you're arguing the laws are fair and reasonable and I'm showing cases of them being neither.

I'm sorry, you are? Like I said, if this was even remotely accurate, this would be a staple NRA talking point.

 

[Bomb#20]

Presidents and senators usually rely primarily on non-partisan organizations like the American Bar Association to rate legal qualifications. Trump and other partisan Republicans have come to rely almost solely on politically biased groups like the Heritage Foundation to assure that nominees will tend to base decisions more on politics than the law.

Are you suggesting that simply not having a formal affiliation with a party is sufficient to make an organization politically unbiased? Collecting statistical evidence to show the ABA is biased against Republicans has been a cottage industry for decades.

 

[Copernicus]

Presidents and senators usually rely primarily on non-partisan organizations like the American Bar Association to rate legal qualifications. Trump and other partisan Republicans have come to rely almost solely on politically biased groups like the Heritage Foundation to assure that nominees will tend to base decisions more on politics than the law.

Are you suggesting that simply not having a formal affiliation with a party is sufficient to make an organization politically unbiased? Collecting statistical evidence to show the ABA is biased against Republicans has been a cottage industry for decades.

Among Republicans, yes. They don't like the fact that precedents don't move in the direction that they want them to--backwards. So they do to the courts what they've done to the mainstream news media--brand it as hopelessly anti-Republican and set up their own media outlets, which are hopelessly Republican. However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law. Many of the people on the Heritage Foundation lists do not.

 

[Bomb#20]

Collecting statistical evidence to show the ABA is biased against Republicans has been a cottage industry for decades.

Among Republicans, yes. They don't like the fact that precedents don't move in the direction that they want them to--backwards.

And people who agree the ABA is unbiased want them to move "forwards", in the direction of "progress".

So they do to the courts what they've done to the mainstream news media--brand it as hopelessly anti-Republican and set up their own media outlets, which are hopelessly Republican. However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law.

I should take your word for that because you give me your word as a progressive? No good -- I've known too many progressives.

Many of the people on the Heritage Foundation lists do not.

Well, that's what the above cottage industry is for. They can easily supply lists of judges and ratings and records showing Democrats get rated higher than Republicans with similar records.

 

[Jarhyn]

Presidents and senators usually rely primarily on non-partisan organizations like the American Bar Association to rate legal qualifications. Trump and other partisan Republicans have come to rely almost solely on politically biased groups like the Heritage Foundation to assure that nominees will tend to base decisions more on politics than the law.

Are you suggesting that simply not having a formal affiliation with a party is sufficient to make an organization politically unbiased? Collecting statistical evidence to show the ABA is biased against Republicans has been a cottage industry for decades.

Reality has a liberal bias against idiots.

The really funny part is that you can even see this with non-human machine learning systems: the less sophisticated ML systems started off "shockingly racist and conservative".

Even the early prototypes of OpenAI's system were fairly bad this way, towards the "most fascist corner" of the common "political coordinate plane".

As the system became more and more able to identify consistency over repetition, , the system started inching it's "deep alignment" towards lib/left. They TRIED to censor it towards "neutrality" on the political plane in the training responses, and so if you just try to ask it something about it's views, it will spit something pithy and "neutral"... But if you attempt to actually ask it for advice, it will give advice squarely in the center of the lib-left quadrant.

GPT 2 was nearish to the middle, GPT 3 took a huge jump, and GPT 4 inches even further.

My expectation is that the ABA has a "bias" more against fucking idiots and people who argue in bad faith, not against "conservatives" specifically. The issue here is the intersection of "idiots", "people who argue in bad faith", and "conservatives"

 

[Copernicus]

Collecting statistical evidence to show the ABA is biased against Republicans has been a cottage industry for decades.

Among Republicans, yes. They don't like the fact that precedents don't move in the direction that they want them to--backwards.

And people who agree the ABA is unbiased want them to move "forwards", in the direction of "progress".

Actually, no. The ABA has a history of nonpartisanship. But, if you've got really good evidence from your "cottage industry" that shows the opposite, I haven't seen it and you haven't cited it. Maybe Justices like Samuel Alito and John Roberts would hold a different opinion. Both received the ABA's highest rating. The organization uses only these three criteria in its ratings--professional competence, integrity and judicial temperament. There is no political criterion in their scoring. Perhaps it's the case that fewer conservative nominees are able to score as high on those standards as one would like.

So they do to the courts what they've done to the mainstream news media--brand it as hopelessly anti-Republican and set up their own media outlets, which are hopelessly Republican. However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law.

I should take your word for that because you give me your word as a progressive? No good -- I've known too many progressives.

And I should take your word for that because you give me your word as a conservative? No good--I've known too many conservatives. You aren't saying anything to contradict anything I've said other than offering your opinion. So don't be so quick to accuse me of offering opinions. I've read articles critical of the ABA, but they haven't impressed me as having any hard evidence that there is a liberal bias. The Lindgren study claimed that there was some evidence of bias for nominees with no judicial experience in their background, but the ABA has claimed he cherrypicked a handful of cases for his study.

Many of the people on the Heritage Foundation lists do not.

Well, that's what the above cottage industry is for. They can easily supply lists of judges and ratings and records showing Democrats get rated higher than Republicans with similar records.

That depends on who compiles the studies and who funds them. Republicans accusing Democrats of bias and vice versa are, in and of themselves, a cottage industry. Republicans find it harder to nominate judges that meet the ABA's criteria, so they conduct studies that show the ABA doesn't rate their nominees as highly as the ones nominated by Republicans. Well, duh.

 

[lpetrich]

I had earlier posted on right-wingers identifying with school shooters and the like, like complaining about lack of mental-health resources.

But I wish to point out that some left-wingers do that also. Consider journalist and activist  Mumia Abu-Jamal

At 3:55 am on December 9, 1981, in Philadelphia, close to the intersection at 13th and Locust streets, Philadelphia Police Department officer Daniel Faulkner conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle belonging to and driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's younger brother. Faulkner and Cook became engaged in a physical confrontation.[30] Driving his cab in the vicinity, Abu-Jamal observed the altercation, parked, and ran across the street toward Cook's car.[4] Faulkner was shot in the back and face. He shot Abu-Jamal in the stomach. Faulkner died at the scene from the gunshot to his head.

Police arrived and arrested Abu-Jamal, who was found to be wearing a shoulder holster. His revolver, which had five spent cartridges, was beside him. He was taken directly from the scene of the shooting to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he received treatment for his wound.[31] He was next taken to Police Headquarters, where he was charged and held for trial in the first-degree murder of Officer Faulkner.[32]

That's a gross overreaction to say the least.

The Wikipedia article has a section on "Popular support and opposition", including many people thinking that he is a martyr.

I remember a cartoon about news-media coverage of this incident. From my recollection of it,

DAMNED MEDIA! They're making a martyr out of him!
DAMNED MEDIA! They're finding him guilty in the press!

 

[Bomb#20]

Reality has a liberal bias against idiots.

And that would be relevant if progressives were liberal.

My expectation is that the ABA has a "bias" more against ... idiots and people who argue in bad faith..

And we've all seen how liberally you throw around trumped-up accusations of bad faith.

 

[Bomb#20]

Among Republicans, yes. They don't like the fact that precedents don't move in the direction that they want them to--backwards.

And people who agree the ABA is unbiased want them to move "forwards", in the direction of "progress".

Actually, no. The ABA has a history of nonpartisanship. But, if you've got really good evidence from your "cottage industry"

Hey man, I was just drawing attention to your use of the loaded term "backwards" to characterize movement Republicans want. The cottage industry's job is to show the ABA's bias, not your bias.

that shows the opposite, I haven't seen it and you haven't cited it.

And? Don't try to reverse burden-of-proof.

So they do to the courts what they've done to the mainstream news media--brand it as hopelessly anti-Republican and set up their own media outlets, which are hopelessly Republican. However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law.

I should take your word for that because you give me your word as a progressive? No good -- I've known too many progressives.

And I should take your word for that because you give me your word as a conservative?

I'm not a conservative; and my word for what? That I've known too many progressives? Who do you think I know? I live on the left coast. Whatever. Whether you take my word for anything is immaterial anyway -- I'm not the one making a positive claim about who is biased and who is unbiased. That's all you.

You aren't saying anything to contradict anything I've said other than offering your opinion.

Which opinion am I supposed to have offered? "However, the ABA has a record of nonpartisanship. They don't care whether judges are liberal or conservative, only that they follow legal precedent and have a solid record of education and experience in the law." was a statement of opinion. You haven't backed it up with anything but complaints about unbelievers. Why should any neutral skeptic suppose your opinion about the ABA has more basis in fact than conservatives' contrary opinion about the ABA? "Biased" and "unbiased" are claims people typically make respectively about those who disagree with them and those who agree with them.

In any event, we appear to be agreed that Republican judges make politically motivated rulings and are selected for that tendency. My impression is that Democratic judges do likewise and are likewise selected for that tendency. If you've gotten the impression that they just follow the law and are appointed by legislators who want them to just follow the law, that might be because their political biases align with your own. If so, that's something you're unlikely to detect by yourself or to be persuaded of by evidence. Either way, the point is, the judges' respective rulings are unlikely to be due to financial incentives, which was the original claim about firearms that sent us down this rathole.

Republicans accusing Democrats of bias and vice versa are, in and of themselves, a cottage industry.

Bingo. Your posts #2411 and #2414 appear to be vanilla examples of that.