Indeed. It's time to ban masturbation already.

Romney vs Obama is a single data point. Just because money didn't win that election, doesn't mean that money doesn't generally win elections.

What we do know is that 91% of the time, candidates who spend more win, at least for Congress. We don't know if there is a causal link, or it's just a correlation, and the real cause is something else. But to bring up Romney is completely disingenuous.

The last few years in this case is more like the last decade. Before JSON, there were (and are) XML-typed columns, and any decent RDBMS will let you use XQuery or similar to query on them directly within your SQL query (and will use special indices to optimize such queries). SQL/XML spec, that standardizes this, was published in 2003. Oracle shipped preliminary support of the then-draft spec in 2002; Microsoft shipped it in SQL Server 2005 in, well, 2005; and Postgres shipped it in 8.3 in 2008.

I mean the Amazon app store for Android, that is pre-installed on Kindle Fire, but can also be installed as an app on any Android device.

What about, say, Amazon Appstore?

Hence why I specifically said that the mandatory label should clearly state that they have no medical efficacy. I doubt they'd sell many "remedies" that way, but if they want to try, I don't see why not.

I would say that it should be allowed to be sold, but, like cigarettes, with a mandatory warning to the effect that it contains no chemicals other than water and has no medical efficacy. If people are still willing to buy it then, it's not fraud.

What should absolutely be forbidden is any spending of public funds on this stuff (which is the huge part of the controversy in UK, where NHS funds homeopathic treatments for patients).

From my personal experience, if the check is denied, the dealers usually go to great length to help figure out what went wrong, including calling NICS again and going over all the details in the form to catch any mistakes. But yes, they won't let you have the gun if you are denied, for obvious reasons. There is a formal procedure in place that lets you challenge a denial, and they direct you towards that.

(As a non-citizen resident, I have been denied twice in the past, both times because the dolts at FBI have messed things up, as there's more data that they have to verify for us, such as any CBP records - it's also why I always get delayed, and that "instant" check is literally never instant for me, and usually takes a couple of days to clear. In both cases the dealers involved were very helpful, and the issue was ultimately resolved after some back and forth with FBI.)

Note though that the third option is that they simply didn't process his background check in time. Remember that the law sets a hard limit on how long a NICS check can be deferred for - IIRC, it's 5 business days? And if they don't come back with an answer by then, the buyer can take the gun, and most dealers will let them do that (again, from personal experience - it happened something like 3 times for me, out of the thirty-something transfers that I have made in total - but such a high rate probably has more to do with me being non-citizen and hence always deferred, so I don't know how it is for citizens).

Some people want a well-paying job, and those are generally more readily available in large cities.

Some people love the entertainment opportunities that city life offers, be it night clubs or restaurants or the local show scene etc.

And so on. Tastes differ. I much prefer small towns for living myself, but not so far from the local metro area that I can't get to all those facilities in a reasonable timeframe if I really wanted to (which I occasionally do). So I settled on a town of 7,000 that is on the very edge of the Seattle metro area, giving me a 35-minute driving commute to work and about 40 minutes to downtown Seattle - while also having affordable land plots and large houses in non-crowded areas where I can have a nice backyard with a large koi pond and almost an acre of a real forest. But I have plenty of friends who live in downtown Bellevue or Seattle proper and love it there, and they find my choice just as incomprehensible as I find theirs.

They're both regulated as "destructive devices". You can own them, but you have to submit the paperwork to ATF, and pay the tax. It's $200 per item, and every shell is considered a separate item, so it all adds up very quickly.

If you want to make an even comparison, then you'd have to do the same thing for those European nations, as well. And guess what? It'll make a similar difference.

The law doesn't mandate serial numbers on firearms. It mandates them on firearms which are transferred, but if you e.g. buy an 80% lower and finish it yourself, you're not legally required to put a serial on it.

If the sale was person-to-person within a state, and that state didn't have universal background checks, then there's no paper trail, and they're not required to make any records or keep them. Good luck remembering who they sold a gun to a year later (and it could as well be 10 years).

According to the most recent updates, he did in fact purchase the gun himself, and therefore passed the NICS check (even though he was legally barred).

But then NICS is in a really shitty state in general, and it has been known for a long time by those who cared to research it. Databases are very incomplete and out-of-date, some categories are not entered there outright by some states etc.

You're right, it didn't just mean firearms. "Arms" generally meant any kind of weapon, usually the kind that would be appropriate for military use (e.g. a sword or a pike, yes; a dagger or a sling, no).

As it happens, it is entirely possible to own a howitzer or a bazooka in US, or even a tank (with a working main gun) - just very expensive. People do it, though. And they actually shoot them, too.

And yet, I haven't heard of a single crime or incident related to a privately owned artillery piece.

So... what social consequences did you have in mind?