The Pilgrims were hardly libertines; they set up some seriously authoritarian governments initially.
They were fleeing the "persecution" of people who wouldn't let them impose their beliefs on everyone. They were literally authoritarians fleeing from a society that was prepared to defend its freedoms from them.
A little bit true, a little bit not. That was a cause of conflict to be sure, but the depradations leveled on them were also disproportionate, and it's not as though their governments were any less authoritarian by modern standards. You couldn't pay me enough to live through the 17th century in most parts of Europe... at the time when the Mayflower set sail, England had a religious zealot and noted witch hunter on the throne, who was as quick to massacre and colonize near neighbors as far away territories. His Parliament was a largely empty concession, which he dissolved by fiat not long after.
Merchant codes sounds like a good idea, but how would you handle cash sales, which is probably the primary way someone with nefarious intent would buy a guy anyway. Perhaps ban cash sales on guns? Maybe not a bad idea.
Ironic, isn't it?
Right.
The thing is we have had multiple cases of people maxing out their credit cards to buy guns for a mass shooting/suicide since they know they won't be around to have to pay the bill. That's what this change is hoping to address.
"Multiple cases"?
Curious how the thinking here works. Usually it’s when the courts overturn an attack on the First Amendment that leftists call it full speed to fascism. What we have here is an attempt to create a mini watered down BCRA (McCain Feingold). The article headline is disinformation — the bill does not require bloggers to register, unless someone else is paying them. The BCRA also required disclosure of donors. That’s the part of the bill the SCOTUS upheld — the only justice against requiring electioneering communications to disclose who paid for them was Clarence Thomas. The left wasn’t screaming about that — the left was screaming about how evil it was for the SCOTUS to let the activists get paid to speak out at all. So it looks an awful lot like whether the left sees paying for other people to speak as an inalienable right the government mustn’t even monitor, or as bribery the government can ban outright, depends on whether it expects the speech to be pro-left or pro-right.
Just one example.
This policy would have killed hundreds of thousands more people.
Then why hate on China about this virus?
For marginalized people, they have become big celebrities in right-wing news media.
The fear of the vaccine, which killed likely close to zero people, trumping the disease itself, which killed one million Americans before their time, taking a year plus off their lives.
