OT: Guns

Very odd that the ATF allows the "bump fire" automatic firing mechanism to be sold. Apparently the classification rests on the lack of a discrete spring in the mechanism providing the auto fire. Rather this depends on rebound from recoil against the pressure of the other hand on the stock. I say if it walks like a duck...

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Rick C 

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Reply to
rickman
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A few hundred is a "large minority" of the US? What a moron!

Reply to
krw

Yes but leftys never let facts get in the way of their utopian dream.

Reply to
krw

n,

Obamacare kills far more people, more than weather or mass-shootings.

The real danger of America becoming a failed state comes from socialism, and, generally, promising people (and getting them dependent on) things we physically do not have, and cannot provide.

Socialism is a tragedy of the commons--it's in no one's interest for the system to collapse, but socialism makes it in each individual's interest to take it for all he can, collapsing the system.

Eventually, lots of people counting on those things discover they aren't there and can't be paid. That's when nations crumble.

By contrast, the American system encouraged wealth and prosperity over stri fe by ensuring that your interest was best served producing more personally, adding to the nation's collective wealth, rather than taking what you lacke d (or wanted) from others.

Seems so quaint now, doesn't it?

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

US

d

There is a large proportion of the left, e.g. the community organizers, who want America to collapse into a failed welfare state.

Cloward and Piven articulated such a strategy in the '60's. And in 2010.

"A mass strategy to recruit the poor onto welfare rolls would create a political crisis that could result in legislation that brings an end to poverty."

By Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

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(They think, BTW, that the way to end poverty is to supply poor people with everything they need. Forever.)

"The ultimate objective of this strategy?to wipe out poverty by est ablishing a guaranteed annual income?will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists see m reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outrig ht redistribution of income."

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

We get accused of being "divisive" a lot, and yet I can't think of anything more divisive than forcing half the people to pay the bills of the other half.

By contrast, charity brings people closer.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

LOL! When "charity" is needed the most, it is well documented that it is at its lowest. We worked with the charity system since the beginning of time and it didn't work out well for many, those who needed it.

I'm not sure who "we" are, but surely the "divisive" part comes from ideas like this, that we should not try to better the human condition via taxes.

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Rick C 

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Reply to
rickman

You say "better the human condition" using government power. Marx said "man is a product of his environment". The Soviet propaganda posters said "when we achive true communism the New Communist Man will emerge".

LOL all you want. Brag of your powers of reason and our lack of same all you want. But you don't even know where your own philosophy comes from. That's not a laughing matter.

And if you don't think forcing half the people to pay the bills of the other half is devisive then you don't know much about the human condition.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

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"Failed welfare state" as in Scandianvai and Germany ...

The US can only dream of being as failed at that.

That's your understanding of the strategy. A more sophisticated articulatio n of the strategy is that you feed the kids well enough to let them take ad vantage of schools, and fund the schools well enough that they can teach th e kids useful stuff. This gives you a productive work force which can do al l kinds of productive stuff.

The Germans are very good at it. The US sucks.

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The trick is to get more income to redistribute. A more equal distribution of income is good in itself

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most_Always_Do_Better

not that James Arthur is prepared to believe a word of it, and he can find every last bit of right-wing think tank output that can be used to skate ar ound the fact that Wilkinson and Pickett (and Piketty before them) are obvi ously right.

In James Arthur's ideal world the top 1% of the wealth and income distribut ion rule the roost to their own advantage.

The fact that even they would end up with more if they accepted a smaller s hare of a bigger pie doesn't come into it. The rich have a natural right to rip off everybody else, and it's immoral to think anything else (not to me ntion dangerous).

With enough mass shooting going on, it's fairly easy to get rid of critics without making it obvious that you are assassinating them. Putin hasn't got the message yet.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

son,

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Statistics? I'm sure that there is a right-wing think tank somewhere that h as made this claim, and it's your duty to amuse us by finding and exhibitin g the fatuous logic they used to sustain this implausible claim.

Back in reality, it reduced the number of Americans without health insuranc e from 16% of the population in 2010 to 8.9% in the first half of 2016.

Having medical insurance won't keep you alive forever, and doesn't seem to make much difference (in itself) in your life expectancy, but it's difficul t to see how getting more Americans health care insurance could kill anybod y.

That's not what socialism aims to do, and the places that practice actual s ocialism (Scandinavia and northern Europe) don't do that. There are a bunch of ailed and failing states around that claim that they are socialist, and James Arthur does seem to take those claims seriously, particularly when i t fits his rhetoric.

Really? Scandinavia and Germany don't look remotely like collapsing. The pe ople there who do live off the state don't get to take what they want, or a nything like as much as they'd like, which eliminates the "tragedy of the c ommons" which is merely a question of imperfect regulation (and James Arthu r doesn't like any kind of regulation).

If they can count on getting all they want, they aren't living under any fo rm of socialism that works. Even Marx promised only "to each according to t heir needs". None of the nations of Scandinavia look in the least like crum bling, and neither does Germany. I'm less confident about the US.

rife

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Provided that you had a lot of money to start with. 99% of the US populatio n has seen their incomes remain static or decline over the last thirty year s, while the increase in the collective wealth ha all ended up in the pocke ts of the top 1%.

Quaint isn't the usual term for blatant exploitation of the bulk of society by a plutocratic 1%. A moronic lack of enlightened self-interest is a desc ription that takes longer to articulate, but does capture the situation mor e precisely.

It's not a situation with a lot of built-in stability.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

The way the wealth distribution in the US pans out, it is more forcing the top 1% of the population to pay proper wages (including health benefits) to the remaining 99%.

Mitt Romney's "47% of the population pays no income tax"

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was essentially correct, but deeply misleading, because the half that didn' t pay income tax were either too young or retired. There's nothing divisive about the working half of the population paying for the care of those too young or too old to work. It is how society is supposed to work.

Perhaps, but charity tends to be less than comprehensive.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Absolutely. Not only does socialism encourage people using the government as a means to take from their neighbors, it pits each against the other in that dismal competition of getting the government to plunder their neighbor, rather than them.

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." - Frederic C. Bastiat

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone." - C. Frederic Bastiat

"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating." - Bastiat

"Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter, by peaceful or revolutionary means, into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it." - C.F. Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

Yep. When my neighbor was out of commission some years ago I raked, hauled his mountains of leaves, and mowed his lawn. He moved, but when I was away tending family last year, others anonymously did the same for me, no mandatory government program needed.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

t
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or,

Not the socialism that exists in the real world, as opposed to the failed s tate criminal conspiracies that like to call themselves socialist.

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Reply to
bill.sloman

I know little of guns, but doesn't sustained rapid fire make the rifle very hot?

Cheers

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Clive
Reply to
Clive Arthur

Apparently one of the modifications he made was a shield to keep the heat away from his hand. And he wore gloves.

Reply to
David Brown

And he had 23 guns.

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Rick C 

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Reply to
rickman

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It is a relatively small event, not the end of the world. Twice as many peo ple have been killed in highway crackups like occurred on I-75 Tennessee 19

90, over 100 burned alive. The media is blowing everything out of proportio n as usual so the mindless mental midges get onboard with banning assault w eapons. And some of those drunken morons in the crowd in LV stood up and go aded the shooter yelling "shoot me", hopefully they got their wish. And tho se so-called innocent people didn't really give two cents for the victims a mong them, most of them just stepped over the corpses on their way out.
Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

No he didn't. :)

Corrosion of self-reliance and productivity isn't inevitable, unless you use the government to redistribute wealth.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

The kind of government regulated redistribution that goes on in Scandinavia and Germany doesn't seem to be corroding self-reliance and productivity there.

The US system where the government colludes in making the 1% richest richer at everybody else's expense isn't doing much for the general quality of life in the US.

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Bil Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Yes, and that's why any form of gun control is only going to make matters worse. Once a certain 'saturation point' of guns is reached in a country, it begins to make far more sense to *encourage* responsible gun ownership and make private gun ownership mandatory like it is in countries like Switzerland and Austria.

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Cursitor Doom

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