Then there is a long list of other things they should also find "worth it". For example, states that legalize marijuana see an increase in car accidents. Including fatal car accidents. So banning recreational marijuana saves lives. How many people who want to ban guns favor legalizing marijuana?

I'm always confused when supposed gun owners support "assault weapon" bans. Do you really think banning guns because they have pistol grips or adjustable stocks is going to save any lives? Because that's the kind of nonsense that defines "assault weapons". And no, when they are banned they become illegal for you to make as well.

I think there are larger social issues leading to more mass shootings and people would rather focus on guns than deal with tough problems.

1) Rate of fire on a semi-automatic is essentially always the same. It's the rate you can pull the trigger.
2) This seems to be chasing an arbitrary characteristic. Most mass shootings are done with 5.56 or .223, which is a small and not particularly powerful round.
3) So the gun is sold with the barrel a little loose and the buyer tightens it up when they get home, or something to that effect. And most mass shootings happen at distances close enough that this doesn't matter so you aren't really solving anything.

Like most gun laws this is an arbitrary solution that won't affect anything other than making the people implementing it feel like they "did something". So yes, people who support the 2nd amendment understand these concepts. Which is why we know this doesn't solve anything.

The way they're used in these discussions they are definitely buzzwords. I don't know the last time a high powered rifle was used in a mass shooting. The AR-15 is considered an intermediate powered rifle. So if people cared about the real definition of that term they wouldn't be throwing it around after mass shootings. "common sense" is just a way to preemptively shut down criticism when you're proposing another stupid law.

I'm not sure where you're getting your statistics but it doesn't sound like a credible source. According to the FBI definition at least 4 people other than the shooter have to be killed in order for it to be considered a mass shooting. Gun control activist sources like to make up their own definitions to inflate the statistics.

You don't seem to understand the situation. Primarily it's about arbitrary demonetization and de-ranking based on extremely vague rules. They want clear rules, better transparency, and a better appeal process. They're working with a union to threaten lawsuits if YouTube doesn't do this.

I'm a little concerned the union may be using this opportunity to put themselves in a position of power over YouTube, but it would be good to see these problems solved.

Here is JoergSprave's original video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And his follow-up videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

So your solution is to protect them from their own bad decisions and do nothing to discourage people in the future from making the same bad decisions?

If you're talking about having the government (taxpayers) pay for something ask yourself whether this would make a successful charity. If you started a charity asking people to donate money to pay off student debts for people who got pointless degrees and partied for 4 years and now can't pay off the debt would you get a lot of people donating their money to it? And if not why is it ok to take their money by force (taxes) for the same purpose?

We could start by doing a better job maintaining them. But hey the government is doing a bad job of managing what it has lets have it manage more, increasingly complicated, things!

That's just having the government subsidize the loan. Which will result in costs increasing by that amount.

If you want to reward people for paying off the loan early a non-zero interest is a good way to do it. Pay it off early and you pay less in interest. I guess that doesn't give you the same feel good effect that your buddy the government is buying something for you.

Seriously. KDE has some nice things going for it but it tends to be quirky. For example, you can't disable mouse acceleration through any UIs. I had to look up the console command and have it execute on login. Which means I also have to change my mouse sensitivity through this shell script.

Direct democracy is a terrible idea. Most people can't be bothered to become informed on anything. As we see with current ballot initiatives, people vote for what "sounds good" (quote from a co-worker on their personal approach to voting). Most people are making important decisions based on a very brief and often misleading summary. They often elect politicians based on even less information.

Not every slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy.

They're already doing that. Look up "deboosting". Project Veritas exposed it but there was more detail in the discussion between James O'Keefe and Steven Crowder (who was specifically targeted with this "feature").

The first thing I thought of when I saw this post was Howard Payne and Deviant Ollam's talk "This key is your key, this key is my key". If you want to see how godawful most companies (and the government) are at security, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Or the incompetence of how the TSA master keys were leaked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Yeah, let's not make any master keys please.

Or young educated professionals overestimate their understanding of the world and build a utopian vision based on a naive and overly simplistic worldview and are too stubborn to see its flaws until they get older and, hopefully, wiser?

Anyway, grandparent is completely correct. Ultimately the voters decide everything. Blaming people spending money to manipulate voters with propaganda is missing the point. There will always be propaganda. There will always be attempts at manipulation and misinformation. And they do this because people fall for it. Your best bet would be to make the voters better informed and better critical thinkers, but good luck with that. We've had decades of campaigns telling people it's their civic duty to vote even when they don't understand the issues. Originally the US only allowed landowners to vote. That's not practical today, but it did provide a filter on the voting pool to favor people more invested in the country and generally more educated.