Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

1) The deterrent effect of gun-laws on felons are questionable when obtaining arms is trivial for anyone. Although I won't argue the punitive aspect of "justice" still remains. Note that just because laws don't always work doesn't mean we shouldn't have them, but see below.

2) If the punishment does actually have a deterrent effect (which is questionable, but lets presume it is true), then it should have a deterrent effect on the underlying violent crimes like murder or assault with a deadly weapon. Assuming the punishments for murder and assault with deadly weapon are worse than felon-in-possession (and I would hope they would be), one would conclude the marginal deterrent effect against violent crime is minimal for felon-in-possession laws. On the other hand defending genuine threat to life with a weapon is generally legal, so the deterrent effect for felon-in-possession is nearly all constituted of felon-in-possession laws. That is the felon-in-possession laws likely have little to no marginal effect on preventing violent crime while they may have significant marginal effect on the ability of felons to legitimately defend themselves. Put simply, it moves armed self defense from "legal" to "super illegal" while moving violent crimes from "super illegal" to "more super illegaler" -- which just seems like an extremely poor tradeoff.

3) In a world where arms are trivial to obtain (felon or no), if people can't be trusted in public not to kill others they should not be released from jail. The idea people would be ok with killing others (or other armed violence) but too scared to break the law to 3d print a gun just seems ridiculous. Releasing people who legitimately are believed to be a threat to the public in the event they obtain weapons just seems bat-shit insane to me. If you want a half-step of probation under which no weapons are allowed while they are closely monitored by a PO, to me that makes more sense. But a free man off probation can be assumed to be able to get weapons whenever they like, so we can't be releasing people to be free if we expect them to kill others with weapons.

4) >The best predictor of whether you will commit a crime in the future, is if you've committed one in the past.

I mean that's probably true. If someone owns a pot plant today, it's not unreasonable to guess they will own one tomorrow. Which if they own guns at the same time, is federally a felony. Of course many of those people were never a particularly worrisome threat, that is until you made that illegal which in your own words turns them into people likely to commit crime again. It's the government taking peaceful people committing a victimless crime and damning them into situation where by your own admission makes them more likely to be trapped into a world of crime in the future (perhaps because felony record hurts their job prospects).

> CSAM and the like.

And here's the nuke everyone likes to drop as a bad faith effort to force others to specifically defend CP offenders rather than generically non-violent criminals. If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children, then they need locked away forever or somehow gone from society. Otherwise, they need their rights restored when they are returned. I'd really prefer not to have a conversation revolving around these kind of offenders, because I find it is often just a clever trap to try and make someone out to be a supporter/defender specifically of people involved with materials involving disgusting acts to children. And of course even these people have civil rights, but defending them is so incredibly unpopular (I admit I don't enjoy advocating for their rights), so it's a cheap and easy win to introduce in a debate system with upvote/downvote to grey out comments.

I'm of the personal opinion that crimes against children should require some nexus to the physical abuse (i.e. the person that did the filming, abused the child, etc) because digitally planting evidence for this kind of crime is so incredibly trivial for police and so rapidly turns the opinion of jurors and everyone against the subject that in effect it's almost like a blank check for police to put anyone they like in jail for a long time without finding an immediate nexus to the abuse of a child or even any witnesses / claims by the child or their family. People merely found with a photo and the cop says "I promise I did not put it there, I am a good honest person" always sat very poorly with me, and I can't help wondering how many innocent people have been convicted of these offenses.

5) If we're going to cherry pick offenses, I'd like to point out owning scary mushroom or an undersized lobster is a felony as well. You may argue crimes such as even those make one more predisposed to violence, but even if that were true I would argue there must be _some_ amount of time (10 years? 20 years?) without committing further crime when there is a regression back towards, within the noise of error, of the general public.

6) >But it does show a lack of respect for the rule of law

When it comes to matters of armed violence I'm far more interested in whether the person respects human life against unjust violence than I am generically about all laws such as whether they used a stock instead of a brace on a "pistol" (felony) or stood in front of a mining truck during a protest (felony in Arkansas I believe, if not one of the adjoining states). One could argue by your (and my) standard the US government should be disarmed.

The “well regulated” means “proficient, properly equipped, well trained, functioning as expected” or similar. You have to assess that phrase in the context of 18th century English.

It has no relation whatsoever to what “regulation” means nowadays.

> Do you think everyone should own a machine gun if they want? How about a rocket launcher?

But almost everyone can own a machine gun or a rocket launcher, where not forbidden by state law. Just pay a $200 transfer tax and wait 3-12 months for the ATF to process your transfer form.

Fair enough, but I raise Jesus as a counter argument of very restrained individual that still is pretty famous, among his other "achievements".

I meant a real-life example, e.g., a news article of it really happening to someone or a court decision that upheld it.

Would it shock you to learn that mass shootings aren't the results of guns, but actually the result of mind-altering medications by pharmaceutical industry that are legal - but 1) in the clinical trials showed an actual increase in suicide [e.g. you're less likely to kill yourself if you didn't take the medication], and 2) that homicide (and homicidal ideation) are also increased due to these medications?

But we don't hear about that? Why? Because pharma, at least in the US, is something like 80% of the advertising revenues of all mainstream-mass media channels - so it's one of the big elephants in the room that they prevent from society being alerted to; health and education institutions have also been corrupted by pharma and their profits.

Otherwise, your arguments are still only at the shallow level - and don't address or even acknowledge that gun control, or gun rights being enacted, may in fact be an authoritarian effort - and most always implemented through the guise of "doing what's good for society."

So is it possible that in Canada, where the Trudeau government is planning to implement a mandatory gun buyback program [for certain guns to begin, but illogically, and that does practically nothing to reduce crime] - using fear mongering and opportunities of US atrocities or Canadian atrocities that the vast majority of weapons used were illegally obtained firearms] is aiming for tyrannical control - or you can't even open your mind to that possibility? If not, it makes me wonder what relatively shallow and skewed information/propaganda/perspective you've been exposed to?