Neither side is scientific.
This is true for both sides of the "Obama is a foreigner" or "Bush did 9/11" debates, too. But that doesn't change the fact that one side is consistent with reality, while the other is absurd agenda-driven fantasy.
Hmm... That might be an interesting legal loophole if the sale/purchase of said rifles is illegal, but the construction of them isn't. Person A buys the CNC machine for $1200, uses it to mill 2-3 rifles that are illegal to buy. He then sells it and instructions to Person B for $1k, who does the same, etc...
Or hell, rents the device out for $100 a lower. Done.
The full-auto sear would only be for ancient AR-15s, they've changing the milling so that to make an effective one you'd need to have a custom sear and do some milling work on the lower receiver.
In which case it's the sear itself that's consider the machine gun, as you mention. As far as I know there's absolutely nothing about the bolt that needs to be changed.
Of course, go back to WWII and weapons such as the M-3 'Grease Gun' and you'll find that with basic machining equipment - not even a precision CNC machine, and you can churn out machine guns for less than $100 a pop.
Indeed, as an individual who leans libertarian, I have to admit that while I find the topic of child porn/abuse very disturbing, and have no problems with harsh sentences for child abusers(the creators of the works), I question the necessity to ban something completely, especially when the works people are trying to ban strays into things like 'child porn' where there wasn't any child harmed in the creation, specifically artificial child porn ranging from cartoon depictions to older actors manipulated to look younger through various techniques from makeup to digital editing. Especially when there's no solid evidence that said artificial works increase the odds that a child will be abused. My standard for banning something that doesn't directly cause harm to others is very high.
Take drunk driving - I allow the banning of the act, even though a drunk driver isn't necessarily going to cause harm to somebody else, because there's mountains of evidence that the risks of them doing so is vastly higher. I oppose movements to drop the limits even more though, because it's getting into statistical insignificance. Drunk drivers are much more likely to kill somebody when they're over
To paraphrase a saying I've heard: "Free speech isn't free if it can't offend anyone". So when considering whether to infringe on free speech we have to look at the most offensive examples. Child Porn. Fred Phelps and the Westboro baptist church. KKK demonstration marches. Mein Kampf, the communist manifesto, etc... That I'm generally very for freedom doesn't mean that I don't like what I fully know some will get up to with it. I just think that it's worth it overall.
I agree on the flamethrowers, though I also remember versions of them being used for pest control as well as controlled burns, snow removal, and other such tasks.
They make a device that pushes out propane or natural gas into animal burrows, turning them into fuel-air explosives, then the operator triggers a spark using the device that detonates it, killing rodents such as gophers in the tunnel network through a combination of overpressure and oxygen deprivation.
It's not what most would consider a flamethrower, but it comes under it in the rules.
As for assault weapons - rifles are used for a statistically insignificant number of murders in the USA, much less the sub-category of 'assault weapons' that are rifles. I have to be specific here because some handguns count as 'assault weapons' as well. The state of California goes above and beyond and counts a firearm that's generally too heavy to be fired unsupported as an assault weapon, even if it's single shot. Never mind that finding a single murder in the USA from that caliber is rather difficult...
Constitutional amendments have nothing to do with debating the merits of the topic.
It does when people start saying things like 'stop hiding behind paper' and 'the constitution is a living document'. Sure it's a living document, there's a way to change it built into the very document itself. Until then, pointing out that many gun control proposals are unconstitutional isn't necessarily out of line.
Also, going by what most recently happened in Colorado, what happened after the first assault weapons ban, and such, pushing for repeal or significant restriction on the 2nd is a good way to lose your office. Outright recalls in Colorado, with 2 politicians losing their seats over their votes(and a 3rd resigning rather than cost the democrats their senate majority), the loss of congress to the republicans because of the AWB, etc...
There's a good chance that the Democrats will lose the senate within the next couple elections because of their law.
Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.
Consider that 40-50 years ago the NRA wasn't even a gun rights organization at the time, having a history of supporting things like the NFA, various 'Saturday night special' bans*, etc...
Then, as the rights people gained power the NRA did a complete about-face on some of the racist things, started considering gun rights as much as hunter safety and the proper operation of safe ranges.
*A 'Saturday night special is a now older term for a cheap handgun. Gun control laws targeting them at least have the benefit of actually targeting the weapons most criminals use. So few people are actually killed by rifles, much less 'assault weapon' type rifles, that it's a statistically insignificant cause of death. More people are beaten to death with people's bare hands and feet.
U.S. v. Miller, in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, argued that the Second Amendment is “restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security.”
I think it's important to note that there was no defense presented in U.S. v Miller because the defendant had died during the appeals process and the firm pushing the case didn't pursue it further due to lack of funds/motivation.
Despite this, per their decision they only allowed the regulation of short barreled shotguns because no military use was presented to them. This was despite there being plenty of evidence available from WWII 'trench guns', but this evidence wasn't presented because, again, no defense was mounted. It was the equivalent of a default judgement, and even then it was actually pretty limited.
Your attempt to include links to such statistics failed. Please, try again. Be sure, your links point to differences between ratios of law-breakers vs. prosecutions by race. Any pointers comparing ratios populations vs. prosecutions are meaningless and will be discarded.
Not the op, but how about this one:
The interaction of race, gender, and age in criminal sentencing: the punishment cost of being young, black, and male
"(1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males, (3) the influence of offender's age on sentencing is greater among males than females, and (4) the main effects of race, gender, and age are more modest compared to the very large differences in sentencing outcomes across certain age-race-gender combinations."
Translation: Young Black Males are the most screwed if they end up in court, likely to receive far longer sentences for the exact same crime. The severity of their likely sentence drops if they're female or a different race, or are older. "Young Black Male" is statistically treated significantly worse than "Young White Male", but once they start passing into middle age the significance drops.
A review of other articles (scholar.google.com) shows that sex&age are probably bigger factors though. An old black guy is about as well/badly off as an old white guy in most criminal trials. I hate Taylor Francis, btw, they don't take my university credentials to see the full papers, so I'm mostly working off of abstracts. Some of the issue seems to be that states with high percentages of poor black populations also tend to be the harshest sentence-wise. So a crime in a predominantly white state where the defendant(90% likely to be white) might get a year regardless of their skin color, but 'down south' where the defendant is statistically black(let's go with 60%), odds are he'll get a decade, again, regardless of skin color. Appropriate sentence for a crime is up to debate, of course, but I'm trying to keep it about race.
Alas, he also had the skills to obtain guns legally.
Thus the 'probably'. Such types are so rare that it's not worth the cost to freedom in having to restrict things like CNC milling equipment - which is useful for a very wide variety of tasks depending on the exact equipment. Either you're restricting the freedom of hundreds of thousands of individuals, or you make getting a permit so loose that the law is ineffective anyways and all it does is either place an additional tax on the people for no good reason or throws our country even deeper in debt.
After all, is a requirement to serialize the firearm produced really going to stop a person so bent on mass murder that they're willing to use CNC equipment to make their weapons?
If we want to stop/slow that we might as well be like how I've heard the Japanese are - everybody gets an annual 'checkup visit' by the police once a year or so. Fixing our healthcare system, specifically the mental health part, would probably help more.
BTW guys, I suggest AGAINST taking the advice of any ACs on gun laws. Every one I've seen is very incorrect. Even I'm incorrect, but I like to think I'm a bit closer.
Since homemade guns are not transferable it was mostly a symbolic idea which at most would add another charge onto an existing arrest and that is about it.
Consult a lawyer before doing this, but 'homemade guns' ARE transferable, you just have to serialize them. 'Billy Bob's #1', 'Billy Bob's #2', etc... would be perfectly acceptable. #1 could be a single shot breech-loading shotgun that you need a screwdriver to reload and #2 could be a semi-automatic handgun, the important part is that they have a unique serial number for the manufacturer(IE you).
Producing firearms with the intent of selling it is illegal without an FFL, but if you make a firearm then use it for a time before deciding to sell it you don't need a FFL.
Please note that the standard varies, but generally speaking if you're making money off your guns(IE selling them for more than it cost you to make them in parts and labor), you're probably going to want that FFL if you're selling more than a couple guns a year.
The initial law suit was over material that was recorded prior to 1972 and was not subject to copyright protection.
My research says that before 1923 is the general time to look for audio recordings that have left copyright, Stuff produced in 1969 still has another 50 years to go. So the only public domain stuff from the '60s would be items that were explicitly put into the public domain, and that's a relatively short(and not very popular) list.
The plaintiffs claim that logs and source code were destroyed in discovery, but this is a normal claim by RIA lawyers when facts don't yield what they want. Of course the RIA is mentioned all over the court findings, including the initial lawsuit started by UMG and RIA. The initial law suit was over material that was recorded prior to 1972 and was not subject to copyright protection.
Perhaps, but if it doesn't favor them then the defense can produce the things to help themselves. Fact is that 'source code and logs' are OFTEN lost on a routine basis even/especially without discovery. Code repositories like git should limit code loss, but that assumes that the git server wasn't lost/purged at some point. We've lost a lot of code from when I was a kid because companies, even major ones, just didn't care.
I had a Audi TT convertible for a while back in the early 2000s. For some reason the pickup truck guys used to fuck with me too.
And this is why I debadged my A8. Except the grill, I haven't got to that yet. Or the teeny little Audi ovals on the sides. Gonna black out the grill logo shortly. I don't want it to look like I have bags of money. I don't. I bought the car cheap and I'm restoring it, which was stupid but there you have it.
A 1986 sporty looking commuter car
No way. The Fiero is a sports car. Sure, it was made out of a bunch of amerishit; I've never driven one but I've sat in one and the lack of build quality is typically shocking for American cars of the era.
The Viper is a muscle car. You can get muscle cars around a track, if you're good enough. You can't simultaneously use the power. They make Viper-based race cars, but they're not really Vipers any more. Or you can replace half the suspension, but then why not buy something that handles to begin with? Like, say, a modern corvette.
"Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality? He who *suffers* from it." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
