> But most people who are not on some extreme should be able to have a conversation without instantly laying into one another.

The problem is that you have groups like Mom Demand Action who are masquerading as "most people" when they are actually paid PR reps being employed by a small number of people who are trying to accomplish a complete civilian disarmament. (Michael Bloomberg in particular.)

Frankly, if you want to have a reasonable conversation, take it offline. I have had many fruitful discussions with neighbors and local people about gun safety and firearms legislation. Online, we have trolls. And the ones masquerading as "reasonable people" are being paid to sow dissent and trouble, as often as not.

> I'm afraid that strategy will fail catastrophically as people urbanize.

You needn't be afraid. Police departments continue to lose funding and staff, and their income from Drug War confiscations is about to dry up (it already has in some jurisdictions such as Colorado). Urban people are buying guns more and more for their own protection, and they are not interested in laboring under increased regulation.

The first rulings made by the Supreme Court on the 2nd Amendment in 70 years both featured urban black male plaintiffs.

I'm not afraid, do not live in fear, and am unconcerned about being threatened with violence. Not only do I live and work outside of inner city environments, but I am white. Statistically speaking, the likelihood of me personally being a victim is extremely small.

It isn't about being afraid. If it was about being afraid, then it would be a terrible and dangerous thing. Instead, it is about liberty and social equality.

“This was a tool whose only purpose was to make holes in human beings.”

This does indeed make the point quite perfectly.

Sometimes, certain human beings need to be perforated. Adolf Hitler, for example. Can we agree that Hitler ought to have been perforated, preferably BEFORE disarming, rounding up, and killing several million Jews?

There can be no "master race" when the "lesser races" are armed. Social equality. Race justice. This is what it is about.

Not dishonest at all. Anti-gunners such as Biden have repeatedly and publicly stated that their eventual goal is the banning of all firearms from civilian hands. Laws such as the one you describe are merely stepping stones towards that eventual goal.

It has zero bearing on public safety, if for no other reason than criminals don't use rifles to commit crimes. So if it has no bearing on public safety, why else would he want it? Like I said, he has publicly stated his intention to ban firearms from civilian hands, so it isn't much of a jump that maybe this law has to do with his previously-stated goal.

It is because the people proposing such controls are not acting in good faith. They wish to confiscate all firearms. They are on record -- repeatedly and without ambiguity -- as being opposed to all civilian firearms ownership (except, perhaps, collectors).

If they were actually, honestly interested in increasing safety, then I think they could garner quite a lot of support from the gun crowd. But to do this, they would need to become acquainted with the actual details of firearms, how they work, and the moral questions surrounding them. Furthermore, they would need to actually pay attention to what gun owners want.

For example, we want access to the NICS background check system when making private sales. Why don't we have access to NICS? Because the anti-gunners block it every time it is proposed. They want it to be mandatory. Well, mandatory NICS checks are a de-facto gun registry. We are allergic to gun registries because we are aware of history and stand appalled and aghast that supposedly intelligent people could be so ignorant.

They don't listen and they don't want safety. They want guns removed from the population. And every law or regulation they propose or modify is aimed at that goal.

That's why gun owners are adopting a zero tolerance attitude towards new regulation.

I am amazed at how caught up you (and so many others) are in the details of Bundy's fee payments, while completely and utterly missing the bigger picture.

The police and BLM were violently harassing protestors. Lots of people got angry and showed up. The police *backed down.* There were no mass arrests, no pepper spraying, no beatings, nothing. Here a protest happened, and the protestors unquestionably won.

Is that good? Is it bad? The government's blatant failure to stop this armed protest guarantees similar altercations in the future. Take labels and judgments out of the picture. How does this event change our political landscape? What does it mean that while Putin annexes Crimea and the Ukraine, Obama fails to crush a (small) armed rebellion at home?

What will happen the next time?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bl9ERZQIgAA9CMU.jpg:large

You don't have to agree with Bundy. But you should be aware of the importance of what is happening.

Actually, very nearly all the NRA's money comes from individual members.

Their top contributors (as I recall) are MidwayUSA and Cabela's. But if you know how those organizations work, you would also know that very nearly every penny of that money comes from individual people's tiny contributions. This is because MidwayUSA has a "round up donation" feature, where you can round up your order total to the nearest dollar, 5 dollars, or 10 dollars, and that additional amount will be donated to the NRA.

I round up every order. Everyone I know does the same. At the end of the year, you get a massive donation to the NRA.

You have a remarkably well-thought-out post, but you are missing one important point.

Have you considered the "opportunity cost" of removing that risk to your person? i.e. what your personal risks will increase if said gun owners no longer own guns?

I want everyone in my family to be able to use my guns without a moments' hesitation. Furthermore, I want perfect strangers to be able to use my gun if I am injured and cannot use it myself. Finally, I want my gun to be absolutely 100 percent reliable.

That reliability concern is the most pressing. Many gun manufacturers still haven't worked out how to make guns operate with >99% reliability (i.e. in a box of 100 cartridges, I will experience no more than one failure to feed or failure to eject). Reliability is hard, and electronics are infamously unreliable.

Electronics are particularly known to be unreliable in the kinds of conditions that concealed firearms experience, such as hard shocks, exposure to strange chemistry, and high humidity.

This is true, but if there are suddenly a new stack of regulatory guidelines on American programmers, you can bet companies will start projects with eyes on foreign programmers from the start.

This is true. Also, sometimes there can be significant monetary potential in doing the right thing, and it can come down to a simple matter of reframing.

And you have the UID to back it up, you ancient old fart.

This is the solution in my case as well. Make yourself so valuable that your (occasional) moral judgements are valued more than the immoral or amoral corporate decision. (But don't abuse it.) Some artful negotiation may be required.

No, but computer science is particularly easy to export.

I am really curious as to who makes up the "super forecasters" of these geopolitical problems. I suspect that they are merely the Libertarian contingent. 30 people out of 3000? Sounds about right.

Or, alternatively, are they spiritual people? People who partaken in psychedelic experiences? What defines this group?

Programming is one of the few industries with a reasonable unemployment rate composed largely of people who are voluntarily between jobs. In my opinion (having gone into a programming career straight out of high school, then going to college at 26) skipping the fucking bullshit in higher ed and going straight for programming is a perfectly valid and appropriate course of action.

Skip the debt. Skip the "social justice" BS while money slips away from you like diarrhea. Skip the booze and marijuana and dead-end "self-discovery." Go straight to where it counts, and build a life in a field where lives and careers are still being built.

My company just upgraded their dev position hiring rec to always-on. We now are hiring (competent) devs any time we find them, regardless of whether we have a place for them at that moment.

Frankly, I want a pretty decent collection of these bulbs for security purposes. I want the lighting in the house to show evidence of activity regardless of whether people are present. The current solution -- using cheap wall timers -- is fraught with mechanical problems, clock synchronization issues, and general dysfunction. Centralized digital control may be more expensive but will be a lot more reliable.