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atomheartbevo

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Posts posted by atomheartbevo

  1. 4 minutes ago, yoladu said:

    Can anyone care to explain to me why it is so drastically higher in the United States?

    We took in a helluva lot of French, Germans, Brits/Scots/Bog Jumpers, and Guineas in the 1800s.  What if they were playing a long game and were actually sending us the dregs of their societies?  Oh wait, they were.

    • Haha 1
  2. 15 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

    It is amazing how much pressure is on kids today. 30 years ago, you had so many options. If you were smart, college was accessible and cheap. Or if you desired, you could go into a trade school and come out with a decent job & easily support a family. If not, there were enough manufacturing jobs that you could get by and work your way up.

    Today, college is ridiculously expensive and no guarantee of a job. Trade schools are still available, but the stigma is negative. And if you can't do any of this, good luck raising a family on $10 bucks an hour with no benefits.

    I don't have an answer, but this problem will get worse before it gets better.

    Military could get a lot of these kids on their feet right out of school.

  3. 14 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

    I don’t think anyone is realistically waiting to “go to town banning firearms.” That is a “they’re comin for your guns” and then “over my cold dead hands” marketing pitch. I think that stance ignores the sensible gun control proposals out there.

    Concerning the repub politicians, it does seem even more apparent now that they represent the interests of the gun lobby/manufactures and the role of the NRA is to shape the repub electorate into believing in the interests of the gun industry/lobby/manufactures. 

    I think we will see something on the level of the AWB, with a lot more provisions.  And I think there are plenty on the left who are ready to roll something out the moment they get power and we have another major shooting.  It's too easy to organize kids who are 18 or about to be 18, and people in general these days, and more and more parents are getting concerned.     

    The AWB happened in 1994 before school shootings were on the national conscious, before the internet was widespread and well before social media, before 58 people were killed and 850 injured by a single guy, before two dozen little kids were slaughtered in an elementary.  

    Not many 18 year olds used to vote, but this is one of those single issues that could do the trick.  And that's not even getting into the fact that Trump is trying to hand Congress over to the Dems within 1-2 elections, thereby setting the stage for something more comprehensive than the AWB.

  4. 15 hours ago, skipperj said:

    Don’t forget, unlike an airport that has many different flight times, most of those 1500 have to be at school at the same time.

    If you're wanting to kill your classmates, there is nothing more appealing than a large line/group of kids waiting to get into school.  I can't believe so many people, including our politicians, want to bunch kids up at just a few entrances.  You don't even need a gun at that point, just a car or truck.

    I really am surprised that the politicians and various groups with skin in the game are not going hard on improving mental health access and care.   Nobody is asking for a return to the times when you could get Uncle Ted locked up because he's wearing dresses and insists on being called Theodora, or when you come from a prominent Boston family and your daughter is a little too progressive so you have her brains scrambled.

    It could be that they don't want to deal with the fallout over whether or not guns should be allowed in households where somebody is being kept in check by medication.  It's already a gray area with felons - if a felon is in a household with an unsecured gun (that is, a gun that they could access), they and the gun owner could find themselves in legal hot water.

     

    • Like 1
  5. On 5/21/2018 at 7:55 AM, Bobby_Batronic said:

    So you think these kids will seek out mental healthcare?  Or that their parents will drag them in for sessions they aren’t interested in?

    You'd be surprised how many parents are told by teachers to have their kids evaluated, and the parents don't want to because of the stigma or because they are lazy.

  6. On 5/20/2018 at 2:40 PM, Horn_Spanker said:

    I was right!  Told the wife when it happened that if the kid had gotten laid, he wouldn't have done it.  Now we lean he was rejected by some female he had an interest in.  I know when I was that age, my largest angst was lack of female attention.

    If I had access to decent internet and more importantly, internet porn, as a young lad, wouldn't have cared as much about getting laid.

    Instead I had to rely on the porn fairy leaving Playboys and Penthouses in hidden places.

    • Haha 1
  7. 18 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

    Banning assault weapons is cosmetic IMO, although a no-brainer. It would help at decreasing the magnitude of mass shootings. 

    I think of Assault weapons as a weighing of costs and benefits.  What are the benefits of them?

    Don't get bogged down in the details - I mentioned the AWB as something that actually happened within our lifetime, and that withstood challenges until the sunset provision kicked in.  The next time there probably won't be a sunset provision.  

    There is a group waiting for the tipping point so that they can go to town on banning firearms, and politicians like Lt. Governor Dannie Goeb are bitching about abortion rather than trying to stave off that group.

    Actually the comments about abortion, blaming schools for having too many entrances, talk of arming teachers, etc. are pretty good signs that Republicans (and the NRA) care less about defending gun owners than they do about winning votes and fundraising for the next election.

  8. 7 hours ago, Radical Larry said:

    It's not official yet, but they're in talks to pick it up. Definitely a good sign, and I hope they get it done. 

    With Bezos really liking the novels and losing the original bidding war with NBC/SyFy, he will probably make it happen just to show them up. Plus it’s got the critical acclaim and loyal fan base already built in. I’d imagine that being first-run on Prime will greatly expand the audience. 

  9. After the Dems get control of Congress, they are gonna run a train on us the first chance they get with something at least equal to the Assault Weapons Ban, which happened in the lifetimes of most of us here (for those who keep thinking we will never see serious gun control). 

    Meanwhile, Republican politicians like Dannie Goeb will keep whining about abortion. 

    Thats where we are at. 

  10. 6 hours ago, elfenix said:

    surly doesn't require any of the information that would make it run afoul of GDPR (from my understanding of GDPR, which is admittedly limited), so GDPR really doesn't apply. 

    Surly uses and stores emails and probably collects IP history on some level. GDPR is in the mix if there are European users and/or Surly has any revenue from Europe (advertising), but it's very doubtful since Surly is such a localized/niche site.

    GDPR is mainly about transparency though, both in making it clear what personal info you collect and what you do with it, and whether you share it (and with whom) and what you must do in the case of a data breach.  Decent privacy policies cover a lot of that, but there is an issue about users being able to download their info/activity (this is a problem for a lot of sites). 

    Many companies put it off until recently. 

    The good news is that it’s a long and complicated/convoluted process if a site is flagged. And more importantly, you can’t have individuals running around filing lawsuits because some Hello Kitty fan site requires their email address or whatever.  And even more importantly, most 'Mercan websites don't have business operations in Europe and/or have a significant EU presence (if any).

    Be thankful you aren't dealing with an e-commerce site that gets a few EU orders every month.

    edit: for clarity, and it's actually not that bad of a thing - would be interesting if American companies had to face hefty fines for playing fast and loose with our data.

  11. 1 hour ago, Hate said:

     


    Fantastic. Another law we will have to pass to see what is in it!

     

    We can see a general picture what’s coming though, and it’ll dwarf the AWB of the ‘90s (which somehow survived numerous challenges). 

    Trump is hellbent on trying to give Congress over to the Dems. Their incompetence is dwarfed by his determination to give them the keys. 

    And for all of the Dems’ incompetence, the moment we have a live-streamed massacre at a high school, or another massacre at an elementary school, the Dems are going to make the GOP completely own it. They will run clip after clip of the GOP doing nothing or bitching about doors or abortion.  They will clean up in the next election cycle after such an event  

    The thought of it is probably the only thing that still gets Nancy wet. 

  12. 1 hour ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

    Unfortunately, all this would do is prevent kids from getting treatment. If Redneck Billy thinks his kid has mental issues, but he knows that if he takes Redneck Billy Jr to a therapist and that therapist reports to the authorities that little Billy shouldn't be around guns, little Billy ain't getting treatment because Redneck Billy ain't giving his guns up to no librul socialist democrat queer lover. 

    And Billy Jr’s teachers would have been taking notes for years about Billy Jr needing to see the family doctor for a mental evaluation and that various issues had been manifesting themselves, and there will most likely be social media giving off clues as well. 

    And then the families of Billy Jr’s victims are going to get the chance to empty what little remains of Billy Sr’s bank account. 

  13. 40 minutes ago, sugar said:

    This national townhall debate stuff solves nothing.

    Pass a freaking substantive gun control law! 

    Why don't we TRY THAT, JUST ONCE!

    Oh substantive gun control is going to happen.  The GOP and NRA are content to do very little or just use the issue to fund raise, so Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are going to get their chance at writing such legislation. It’s just a matter of when (probably after the election and swearing that follows a live-streamed massacre). 

    And the GOP and NRA are doing a good job of creating a young generation of single-issue voters. It’ll hurt the GOP, but will make the NRA richer. 

  14. 3 minutes ago, bernorange said:

    To my limited understanding, it's going to be an issue for any site that wants to monetize traffic with an ad network.

    In which case, Surly is not collecting the personal data, but Google/whoever the ad company is, is the entity collecting the data.

    Surly technically isn't doing business in the EU, and they probably already have the proper privacy policies in place.

    For a site to reach a point where there are fines, etc., requires a lengthy process with plenty of warnings along the way.

  15. After all, might have posters living in the EU, and Surly could get fined by the EU for non-compliance.

    I'm kidding, I don't think that would be an issue for Surly, but I've been having to deal with this shit on a few websites (or fielding questions) for the past few months, so I'm going to bitch since the deadline is this week.

  16. 14 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I'm no fan of the ideas of arming teachers and locking down schools, but if we're truly going to insist that all ideas are on the table . . . then all ideas have to be on the table.  I can't in good conscience rant about restricting magazine capacity, tightening private gun sale regulations, etc. without allowing for other potential solutions.

    In the end I think the optimum solution will probably be a combination of small, incremental effects on multiple fronts.

    The Republicans and NRA are unwilling to make small changes, because they use the idea that even small changes will lead to bigger changes in order to drum up support at the polls and raise money.  

    They don't care that making even small changes that could lower these shootings by a measurable effect would take a lot of wind out of the sails of those pushing for major gun control.  They are only interested in getting votes and donations, not protecting gun owners.

    Instead of small, incremental changes that the GOP, NRA, etc. would be able to have a hand in, or instead of a major overhaul in how we deal with mental health issues, we're going to get some major fucking changes pushed through by a Dem-controlled Congress that will leave us praying the Supreme Court is more conservative than it is.

    All it's going to take is some kids being executed on somebody's livestream. 

  17. 4 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Let’s say a kid instead steals his parents vehicle to murder dozens of people, should the parents be held responsible? 

    I don’t disagree with your suggestion, I’m just trying to look at from other angles.

    We already see plenty of civil lawsuits filed against parents for shit their kids do.   If you can show the parents were idiots, particularly in regards to kids with mental health issues, we need to have that discussion, even if nothing changes.

    At the end of the day, the guns themselves are not the issue, the issue is about access to said guns.

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