Steam Flyer

That's interesting.... I wonder what the graph of income distribution would look like. I also wonder if it's because that upper 25% is skewed by the richer people living elsewhere. In many ways, the life of a poor person in a rural small town is not as oppressive as in a city IMHO. You're not confronted with much richer people in your face every day, you have lots of elbow room, quieter and slower-paced life. -DSK

Sometimes, you just gotta look the other way while the sausage is being made " The consequence is that highly regulated states also greatly disadvantage those with low and modestly middle-class incomes. This likely helps to explain migration patterns that have long favored southern, low-cost states. With their friendlier policies, it seems that low-cost states are now saying to high-cost states, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Yes, it's interesting that the classic migration pattern has reversed..... been that way for some time. But invariably, the low-tax, low-regulation places are also the places with the worst income disparity, and the worst quality of life disparity. It makes you wonder why people make the choices that they do. -DSK

I feel your pain. But there's an old saying, if you want anything done right......... OTOH I don't have enough time to keep up with all the maintenance I need done on home & toys; and so try to hire it out to people who are at least competent and honest. Have found a few, luckily........ actually I think luck doesn't have much to do with it, other than fate's coin toss of having them in your town in the first place. Ask questions, observe, look over the shoulder (unobtrusively), I am never shy about asking stupid questions to find out if the person knows fuck-all about what they're doing. A lot of times, people who normally half-ass jobs will do a good job if you show them you appreciate their talent. I had a lot of mechanics helpers like that, coddle them and they perk right up. OTOH I put my foot right up the noses of a few, with the result that I had to carry twice as many toolboxes back to the truck............. live and learn -DSK

I hope you saw some humor in my post..... it's a sad reality though. I hate the idea of being spied on, and having lots of data collected on me...... but that genie isn't going back into the bottle. Another way to look at it, guns are the least of our worries. -DSK

There is still a huge amount of "publicly and freely" available info on you, and it's commercially valuable. So much so, that is the business model of a heck of a lot of companies. Right now, it's all about politics..... why anybody would think a system that can track potentially pregnant teens so they can be marketed to https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ would NOT be used to affect elections, is simply a case of wearing blinders on the bag over the head....... although to be fair, I didn't particularly see it coming down in the way that it did. But I hate the idea, and have several tricks up my sleeve to both keep a low profile and keep my data from being valuable. Gun registry? Scary, yes...... but we don't live on the frontier any more, Dan'l. This ain't the Wild West, Wyatt. If you don't want your family getting shot at any public event just because some loony decides he's fuckin' had enough of our shit, then we need to keep massive firepower out of the hands of mass murderers. We work at keeping nukes out the hands of aggressive hostile nutball foreign leaders. This is the exact same thing, only closer to home. Or just let it all go. Fuck it. The world is overpopulated, right? Once that problem is solved, we can go back to fondling our guns in peace. -DSK

So it's OK for the feds to keep information that could be used to round up the firearms owners? Check. Not sure how you read that into what I actually said There is already a background check, it's just full of holes and poorly funded. Shall we dispense with it and save more money? It would be more rational to be concerned about private parties gathering and selling data on you -DSK

Indeed so - and I'd considered that, but, honestly can't think of a single instance that equates to the point you were making. Not bustin' your chops about this - if there's some enforcement action that the Rs or Ds refused to allocate funds to support, I'd want to know about it. Understood.... I don't have a specific example in mind but a couple of things line up.... it's Republicans that are always axing expenses for everything except the military; and it's Republicans that are against putting any teeth in gun enforcement. Having an actual working universal background check system is considered by the NRA to be a steppingstone to confiscation. Frankly I'm not in favor of the gubbermint knowing any more about me than I want it to know, but then I'm not buying a high powered high capacity magazine autoloading rifle with which to shoot up my community, either. -DSK

Actually, there is. Transferring more than $10,000 is a transaction that needs to have certain info attached to it, because terrorism. Making multiple transfers of just under $10k to avoid the report is a criminal act. Trump is guilty of this, prima facie. If you were not a traitor, you'd want to know what Trump was covering up. But you are one, and you want to help him cover whatever it is. -DSK

It's been going around 'n round for several iterations since the 90s. Does the phrase "unfunded mandate" bring back any memories? -DSK

Is Trump the boss of his staff, or isn't he? -DSK

blah blah blah NRA talking points. What about the exception where is a BGC takes longer than X days, you get a free pass? What about the "gun show loophole" which you want to holler about being unimortant, yet the fact that you're hollering about it says otherwise. If, as you assert, all the mass murderers are in fact passing BGC's and getting their guns perfectly legally, that makes it worse for the system, not better. It's clearly dysfunctional. -DSK

As I asked steamers on the other thread, please name me ONE mass shooter who got his gun through a private sale or gun show? I have repeatedly said I have no issue with universal Background checks that include private sales. But that is not the problem here. If it was, we would hear about it. Trust me the press would go ape shit if that were the case. And the vast vast majority of gun sales at gun shows are through licensed FFL dealers who are REQUIRED to run all sales through a BGC, so this gun show loophole is mostly a myth. And again name one mass shooter that has gotten a gun this way or through a private sale.... I have no idea where mass shooters have gotten their gunz from, it's generally not part of the story. And paranoid raving about "the press going ape shit" is not even wind. As we've discussed before, I think the FIRST STEP is to start tighter enforcement of existing laws, you seem to express approval of this approach too. However one of the problems is that Republican legislative bodies refuse to allocate funds for this. I think it would also be productive to have a public dialog about the responsibilities that accompany all rights, but the topic of this thread is gunz so let's stick to that. Who should be allowed to buy a gun? As you've said, there are already classes of people who are prevented from such. -DSK

Talk to the Founding Fathers. You gun nutz want to keep yelling "2nd Amendment!!" but then you have a problem with what it actually says. -DSK

Another fucking lie There have been many crimes, many crimes. People already doing time. It's certainly possible to declare that just because you don't like something, it doesn't exist, but it tells more about you than about things. Repeating the lie over and over and over will not make it true -DSK

Grifting away again in Margaritaville.............................. I feel sorry for the dogs, trapped on a boat with these people FB- Doug