My Dad has had a federal firearms license for a couple of decades but this year he's not renewing. He is so sick and tired of the ATF and their shenanigans. It is definitely a bureaucracy in need of some leadership.
ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
141–150 of 192 posts
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The universal background check law means that it's illegal for me to give or lend my firearm to my brother, my cousin or my good friend. The existing law was fine: it should be illegal to knowingly transfer a firearm to someone ineligible to own one. To improve the efficacy of the existing law, I think it would be useful to provide a free and anonymous service to the public that allows private gun owners to query t…
You'd need their SSN.
Yes, at least. I'd be mildly concerned about people like landlords misusing the system, but I suspect that you can already determine if somebody is a felon with their SSN?
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine eventually succeeded to kill himself. He did so jumping in front of a big lorry on a (British) motorway. There had been many attempts leading to that one. Bodies of water, tall buildings, other road traffic incidents, alcohol and pills were all tried, with quite some determination. None of us could persuade him that his life was well worth living, we all tried. He was the brightest at our school so i…
First, I'm feel for you that you lost a loved one in that manner. I share a similar pain because I have lost two family members to suicide, one with a gun and one without. Both succeeded on the first attempt. I suppose I should advocate the banning of personal ownership of shower curtains and shower rods. From my perspective, the how was not a factor for me. I was more concerned over the why. To this day I have my th…
True, a lot of time was spent prolonging an unhappy life or at least trying to postpone the inevitable. However he was pleased to receive the company of friends. To say 'here you go, gun/pills in top drawer, help yourself!' is a betrayal of life, one would be breaking ranks with every sentient being that has life force and believes living is an ideologically sound thing to do. Yet, you are right, with hindsight, it would have been better for my friend if I had just helped him do the deed.
As well as 'failures' there are 'success' stories. At university I had the fortune of sharing a house with a deeply suicidal man, to discover there really weren't the resources at the university to handle that. As well as practical help (hospital, cleaning up blood-stained things) we found another path for him, to sort it out with his folks, funding bodies and his department. He quit university rather than top himself, recovered from his depression and the following year he gave university another go. I did wonder how far a 'cry for help' could go, he broke his leg jumping off the side of the bridge, not the middle, the cutting went a long way too, but not all the way.
Regarding gun culture in the USA, I can see the appeal, and, what would the West be without guns?
However, I also lived in an inner city area in the UK where there were guns and I thought the crime aspect of the area was 'cool' and that it was great to live 'on the edge'. Then I got beaten to a pulp - no gun, just knife - and, after that my perspective changed totally. I was no longer aloof from the shootings, wife beatings and drug related crime that went on.
Sometimes you need direct experience to have illusions challenged. To me US gun culture is a bit like that, it is easy to have illusions about how guns are this or that, we rarely hear the opinions of those that have been shot.
Now if you Americans could just get on with forming militia and driving up to Washington to dispatch that government of yours... Really, if that is what the guns are for, how much more provocation is needed?
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would people flip out if there was a bill proposed to require all guns in the US to have a GPS tracker? As a gun control advocate who also owns guns, yes, I would flip the f * out. While I have no problem if the government knows I own a gun (they know I own a car), Putting a GPS tracker on it would result in two things: 1. The government would know where I am at all times (I carry my Kahr CM-9 everywhere that allow…
You already carry a cellphone, I presume. Also, I am against most forms of gun control, being otherwise very liberal in my worldview. However, I cannot possibly understand why a developer would need to carry a gun at all times. You are inviting trouble with that, and more likely to die to your own gun than you are to protect yourself from some bad guys. If you want to carry a gun with you, I support your right to do…
"Why would a developer need to carry a gun at all times?"
As a brief example, take a look at the recent trend of 'protesters' storming the Google Bus, breaking windows, and generally causing a disturbance. What protection would the Googlers have if some of those protesters decided to stop breaking windows and start breaking kneecaps? What if the 'protesters' wanted a little more from the female programmer crowd that day?
I realize that San Fran (and most of California) has a fatwa on concealed-weapons and private gun ownership in general, but to not put too fine a point on it: THAT is why. Regardless of your profession, you should have a right to defend yourself against violence. Legal conceal-carry is the best way a 90-lb programmer can defend herself against a 200-lb assailant. Victims should not have to rely on the largesse of their assailants to ensure their personal safety.
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#145This seems to be a paradigm case of entrapment. This should thus be easily sorted out in the courts. Am I wrong? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment
Well yes. But only 4% of the cases end in court - the others are plea deals. So you need competent and capable defense, defendant that is willing to take the risk against the huge prosecutor mallet the DA is swinging and probably some luck. The targets in the article are from parts of the society that are already outcasts for various reasons. (Not a lawyer, from observations)
yeah, i forgot about the US system for a moment. i knew the 90+% plea bargain number, but it is so utterly inconceivable that i always and again forget it. simply does not compute.
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it does not. The statistics show that firearms are the most popular choice. If it is a contributor then people shoot themselves BECAUSE they own the gun. I fail to follow that sort of logic. The only connection I can agree with is that firearms allow for snap decisions and fatal first-attempts. Owning a gun does not lead you to a suicide risk, but it doesn't help if you have suicidal tendencies. That's not enough…
> If it is a contributor then people shoot themselves BECAUSE they own the gun. That is a pretty strict interpretation of the cause of suicide. Of course, nobody kills themselves by sheer virtue of the fact that they own a weapon. > Owning a gun does not lead you to a suicide risk That is precisely what those studies suggest. Having a firearm nearby does in fact increase your risk of suicide. Whether or not that is e…
I don't see a strict interpretation of the cause of suicide in what I said, I see a disagreement in whether guns are contributors.
Having a gun increases the likelihood of you attempting to use it, much like using any other means to do so. If knives were the most common choice, should we consider them risks for everyone because they might commit suicide with them? The fact that so many succeed with guns while failing with others makes it look like a contributor. The studies tell me that people are just more successful with guns. Anything that states that guns are a contributor I would have to disagree with as to how I understand what contributing means.
But I'm glad to see that you agree with me that not all guns are designed to kill living things. Hopefully you agree that such arguments are silly on their face and are designed to cause an emotional reaction. I believe I've shown elsewhere that I have no problems with having reasonable regulations on weapons designed to kill human beings on the battlefield, such as fully automatic weapons.
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with gun registration versus car registration is that there is no real use to having a list of car owners, other than legitimate ones. But, a list of people with weapons would be the first thing any would-be dictator would love to have. I realize I am inviting the wrath of Godwin's Law here, but, as a real-world historical example of the threat of gun registration, the Nazis: "In 1931, Weimar authorities…
It's a myth that Hitler Nazi movement employed gun control to any amount to gain power, it merely employed it as an additional mean once it was there, owning a gun wasn't really of much help at that point. Also it just brushes over that facts that just 12 years before that guns were outlawed completely after WWI in Germany (analog to 2001 as of today), that the Weimar Republic witnessed some rampaging street violence…
The Nazis never won over a third of the vote in an open multi party election in Germany. The insider establishment parties chose to hand power over to the Nazis rather than allow reformers or Communists to threaten entrenched wealth and monopoly power.
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Godwin's Law is important because it shows the cost of attaching baggage to your arguments. I think that if you can argue that something is bad by invoking Hitler, you can argue that something is bad without invoking Hitler. It's not just that going Godwin is tacky. It is, or should be, a sign of rhetorical weakness. I don't think the problem described by Godwin's Law is that bad arguments cheapen Hitler. I think the…
While bad arguments can be made with Hitler, good arguments can be made with Hitler as well. These arguments do not necessarily need to use Hitler, but they can . They frequently do because comparisons to Hitler are accessible. Nobody needs to explain who Hitler was; nobody needs to tap out of the conversation for a few minutes to go read the Hitler wikipedia page.
Why not use an example other than Hitler here on HN then? I'd assume people here are reasonably well educated and don't need intellectual spoonfeeding.
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't even have to bring morality into the equation. There's functional problems with this sort of operation, for precisely the reason you outlined. The legal system assumes that people can figure out, based on social context, what the law is, or at least know when they need to consult a lawyer. Actively misleading people, in the guise of licensed dealers, upends this assumption. Whether it's moral or immoral, it…
Morality is important to bring into the equation. Although s/he didn't have to, as you say, I'm glad s/he did. One should always keep ethics as a fundamental layer in discussing law, especially about actions that result in forms of torture (e.g. prison).
The problem with morality is that it's a lot more subject to disputes and individualized viewpoints than law. For example, I think it's ridiculous to say that prison is a form of torture. If you come at me with that as the basis for your argument, we'd just argue past each other and never reach a satisfactory resolution. We'd waste all day with philosophical disagreement. But if we follow a policy of resolving issues by reference first to the law, well then we may well find ourselves satisfactorily resolving the issue without ever bringing up our divergent personal views of morality.
Of course morality always remains in the background. But it's a backstop, an argument for changing the law.
Re: ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would people flip out if there was a bill proposed to require all guns in the US to have a GPS tracker? As a gun control advocate who also owns guns, yes, I would flip the f * out. While I have no problem if the government knows I own a gun (they know I own a car), Putting a GPS tracker on it would result in two things: 1. The government would know where I am at all times (I carry my Kahr CM-9 everywhere that allow…
The problem with gun registration versus car registration is that there is no real use to having a list of car owners, other than legitimate ones. But, a list of people with weapons would be the first thing any would-be dictator would love to have. I realize I am inviting the wrath of Godwin's Law here, but, as a real-world historical example of the threat of gun registration, the Nazis: "In 1931, Weimar authorities…
For an alternative view, you should watch John Oliver's 3 part Daily Show special on gun control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOiOhxujsE&feature=sharecont...