US Politics Mega-thread - Page 198

On April 14 2013 04:29 HunterX11 wrote:


I said that homeowners shouldn't be simply let off the hook in the very same sentence! And "validity" is determined by technical claims, i.e. the courts. In some cases, people were making mortgages payments to the wrong entity when someone else really was the valid recipient. The point is that the banks shouldn't be allowed to foreclose just because they say so, the law be damned. The law exists for a reason. What if the people formed a milita and took the bank executives hostage, like the Anti-Renters did to the Patroons: would that legitimate, since the law is merely technical, but guns are real?

On April 14 2013 04:31 aksfjh wrote:

"Valid" in what sense? The bank can't prove they own the home or that the person in the home has defaulted on payments.

On April 14 2013 04:10 aksfjh wrote:

It's a very "doomsday-esque" article mixed in with facts. It has good facts, mind you, but then jumbles them up with paragraphs like this:

It doesn't back up any of its fear-mongering statements with actual facts, just the statements before it.

On April 14 2013 08:29 rod409 wrote:

That article is misleading when it says over 100 million working age Americans do not work as it does not say what ages that defines. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses 16 and over (source). The percentage has dropped about 3% since 2008 which I find unsurprising for a bad economy and an increasingly older population. Also you can compare to previous years and we are at similar employment to population ratio as in the 1980s.

If you are curious to the number of people not in labor force by age group in 2011-2012, I found foot note 1 funny. link

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she will support a proposal to expand background checks for commercial gun sales, according to a report Saturday.

The Manchin-Toomey proposal is “a responsible breakthrough from two people who have far better NRA rankings than I have,” Collins told NBC News.

Collins joins Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois in supporting the measure, which would require background checks for online and gun-show gun sales. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) reached a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) last week and said Kirk would support it.

The National Rifle Association said last week that it opposed the measure and that it will consider “votes on all anti-gun amendments or proposals” in its evaluations of political candidates.

The plan could come up for a vote as soon as Tuesday as the Democrat-controlled Senate begins debate on a gun control bill spurred by the shooting that killed 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn., in December. Collins met with victims’ families in Washington last week while she considered the Manchin-Toomey plan.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/susan-collins-manchin-toomey-background-checks-90029.html?hp=l1

Pitching gun violence legislation during a major speech in Connecticut this past week, President Barack Obama noted that, according to multiple polls, 9 in 10 Americans agree that somebody purchasing a firearm needs a background check.

"How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything?" he joked, drawing laughter from the audience.

In collaboration with the online polling firm YouGov, The Huffington Post set out to answer that question. What we found: Not often.

We asked about the most popular, least controversial things we could think of, and we found only one thing -- ice cream -- that garnered more approval than background checks do on some surveys.

More Americans, it turns out, support universal background checks than like apple pie, baseball, kittens and child labor laws.

On April 14 2013 10:25 Sermokala wrote:
Everyone wants background checks just like they want gun control. The devil however is in the details and I see the NRA making how those background checks work consume this wave of new gun control popularity. Its a stunning victory for the NRA from where they started out from not that long ago.

A national system tracking gun sales is the same as forcing people to register your guns with the government and allowing them to know who has guns and who/if they sold it to anyone. there physically isn't a way to make it work so that you don't have nationally registered guns and yet have a credible background check system.

People are just going to sell guns and then claim that they were stolen, then some guy down the line will "find it in the street with no serial numbers and no other way to identify which gun it is" and laugh at the system. Anything less won't have a reason to exist at all and anything more will cause the democrats to lose their spot in government to a resurgent and united republican party.

The NRA has won a victory where the only thing that is being debated is a win-win for them. what the fuck are these people.

On April 14 2013 10:40 aksfjh wrote:

Isn't it a federal crime to be carrying a gun with no serial number?

Also, the NRA is lobbying against this thing like crazy, asking for "current laws to be enforced" instead.

On April 14 2013 10:50 Sermokala wrote:

If someone is able to notice that you don't have serial numbers on your gun a federal crime is probably one of the last things you need to be worried about.

The NRA has always been against any new laws. By fighting like hell against background checks specifically they can allow their top guys to "compromise" on it and make it look like a victory that the other side expends sufficient political capital on to make the whole fight to begin with worth it.

Basically they chose the battlefield that the whole debate is now framed on. therein lies their victory no matter what happens.

...Versnel cited the value of a strong background check system for most gun sales and provisions that would prohibit establishment of a gun owner registry by the federal government.

For the past several months, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) walked a fine line on comprehensive immigration reform: simultaneously working to craft legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship while bending over backward to assuage and sometimes play to the concerns of his conservative colleagues and supporters.

But on Sunday, as he and seven of his Republican and Democratic colleagues prepare to release a comprehensive immigration reform bill early this week, Rubio sang a different tune. The potential 2016 presidential contender took center stage with appearances on seven talk shows — including on two Spanish media outlets — kicking off a serious effort to win over skeptical Republicans and pass reform.
In making his pitch to fellow Republicans, Rubio continued to share their concerns about the bill. Rubio acknowledged, for instance, the concern of Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who has argued that reform should come in small steps rather than one comprehensive bill. “That’s my preference too, is to have done that in individual bills,” Rubio said on CNN’s “State of the Union”. “That’s not the direction the Senate was headed. So I made a decision to try to influence the direction we were headed.”

But Rubio also took on his critics objections and offered his own counter arguments.

To Sen. Lee’s preference for a piecemeal approach, Rubio argued that the comprehensive bill is divided into segments and that each segment is being treated independently. “Through our negotiations, we’ve been able to keep these segments separate from each other,” he said. “In essence, we haven’t had to trade less border security in exchange for a modernized system… As long as the product stays that way, it will be defensible.”

On contentious pathway to citizenship question, Rubio vigorously argued against the accusation that the Gang of Eight’s plan amounts to amnesty. “I would argue to you that it will be cheaper, faster and easier for people to go back home and wait 10 years than it will be to go through this process I’ve outlined,” Rubio said on “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s why it’s not amnesty.”

He also took on a critique from the conservative Heritage Foundation — now run by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) — that the bill will be an economic drag.

On April 15 2013 06:14 cLAN.Anax wrote:


I still don't think that increasing the scope of background checks will be very effective. (it's always been something I'd be willing to compromise on, however, if it meant something else were permitted, such as more public areas legal carriers could carry) But preventing a national gun registry is relieving, and I will hold these two to that promise.

On April 15 2013 06:22 Mohdoo wrote:
Why are people opposed to a federal gun ownership registry? What difference does that make?

On April 15 2013 06:22 Mohdoo wrote:
Why are people opposed to a federal gun ownership registry? What difference does that make?

On April 14 2013 11:26 aksfjh wrote:

But a hollow victory. It doesn't seem like the Democrats are expending much capital to push this part through, but Republicans are likely to be "exposed" as uncooperative if they obstruct it. Assault weapon bans and the like aren't likely to be passed in the climate anyways, since it's been pointed out multiple times that many of the guns used wouldn't be affected. The original ban also turned out to be quite unpopular in hindsight.

On April 15 2013 06:22 Mohdoo wrote:
Why are people opposed to a federal gun ownership registry? What difference does that make?

On April 14 2013 10:25 Sermokala wrote:
Everyone wants background checks just like they want gun control. The devil however is in the details and I see the NRA making how those background checks work consume this wave of new gun control popularity. Its a stunning victory for the NRA from where they started out from not that long ago.

A national system tracking gun sales is the same as forcing people to register your guns with the government and allowing them to know who has guns and who/if they sold it to anyone. there physically isn't a way to make it work so that you don't have nationally registered guns and yet have a credible background check system.

People are just going to sell guns and then claim that they were stolen, then some guy down the line will "find it in the street with no serial numbers and no other way to identify which gun it is" and laugh at the system. Anything less won't have a reason to exist at all and anything more will cause the democrats to lose their spot in government to a resurgent and united republican party.

The NRA has won a victory where the only thing that is being debated is a win-win for them. what the fuck are these people.

On April 15 2013 06:29 Dazed_Spy wrote:
Competent? Lol

The truth is gun control legislation is pissing in the wind, and avoiding the issue in the first place. Almost all massacres [like 90%] have happened in gun free zones. Gun free zones and cities with stronger gun control have more gun deaths. Regardless, you cant limit the use of guns by criminals [because by nature they will use them in illegal manners] except by reducing the amount of guns in a dramatic way. Which can only be done through extensive buy outs, and, ultimately, confiscation. There are a hundred million guns out there. It wont happen, its illiberal to try, and its populist hollow rhetoric to claim anything else.

Exactly the only thing you can do to reduce gun violence is to look at the proximal causes of crime itself. Mental illness, low income mobility, drug use, etc, and orient programs to solving them. In other words, if you want a peaceful society, you must engender laws and an environment that create a peaceful and collaborative civil society. NOT rely on the Government to make it all better by fiat.

This should be *the* hallmark of Liberals in America, fostering civil society and individual responsibility. But then again, Liberals in America arent actually Liberals, which we all know too well.