champu

You'll have to forgive me for being discouraged from trying further to convince you.

A witch hunt is not the targeting of a single individual. A witch hunt is the general drumming up of moral panic over a group you insist is a threat or an enemy. It carries a negative connotation because evidence brought against individuals in the course of a so-called witchhunt to show that they are a threat is shakey, and the person doing the drumming will attempt to distract from that fact by simply reiterating the severity / nature of the overall threat. You've already dismissed attempts in this thread to point out why using the list is a shakey proposition and you've attempted to refocus the discussion on the severity / nature of the threat and away from the individuals who would be caught up in this. It's a pretty textbook witchhunt.

For reference... http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf

The only part of the government that isn't civilian is the military. The CIA is a civilian organization. So is the NSA, FBI, ATF. Correction: the NSA is not a civilian organization although they do employ civilians (most notably the deputy director.) But the agency is always headed by a commissioned officer of the armed forces who reports up through the Secretary of Defense.

I'm not "fine" with the idea of everyone having armed drones any more than I'm "fine" with everyone having firearms (i.e. not especially fine.) I don't even disagree with the principle that no one in the civilian world should be flying armed drones around. But I will pretty much always disagree with a motion for legislative action until we square away details of how that might work or how that might help the situation, because until you do that you cannot claim it's better than the null solution: don't pass more laws. A sort of application of the adage, "Don't speak unless it improves upon silence." An armed drone consists of a) a drone that is large enough to carry a weapon of some sort, b) a weapon of some sort, and c) a mechanism capable of employing the weapon. If someone is "on the brink" or has all three of these things and a desire/conviction to assemble them and murder someone with it, then a law that targets them in this phase of the act would simply be making murder more illegal. (your "determined person" if you will.) So how do you regulate any or all of these prior to this phase? Do you think it's feasible to identify and prohibit items from a) and c) without a whole mess of collateral damage to the technological advancement of drones for uses we don't want to prohibit? How specific in purpose do you imagine items in group c) to be? Do restrictions on items from group b) really need to be made in the specific context of drones and, if so, how could they? Do you make "constructive possession" illegal? (i.e. one is allowed to own a handgun OR a drone, but never both?) And even with these problems addressed, I think building and employing an armed drone to murder someone in an effort to avoid an eye-witness placing you at the scene very quickly becomes zero-sum for your chances of getting away with it.

Apparently. My understanding of your point is that "Weaponization of drones for civilian use is pretty much the worst thing that could possibly happen in terms of murder with complete deniability" and that "they should completely outlaw it." Now you go.

Quickly! To the Legislature! Make fun if you'd like, but this scenario isn't limited to rednecks mounting .45s on quadcopters just to see if it could work (we had that discussion quite awhile back). This could be used by any corporation, cop or politician to suppress even the most minor of dissent and do it with complete immunity. It sounds like if someone is murdered then you'd probably want to conduct a murder investigation. Whether or not it was legal to have manufactured or configured the drone that was used to do it will not assist you in catching the murderer. I dislike going down the whole "criminals ignore laws so why have laws" rabbit hole as much as anyone, but some laws passed out of frustration or fright are truly hopeless. De Leon's "ghost gun" bill has a similar problem. You describe a scary scenario where someone goes from zero to successful murder through a series of completely untraceable and undetectable steps. "Look how easy it is to get away with it! We shall make one of the undetectable steps illegal!" Your very rationale for needing the law in the first place contains the explanation for why the law won't work. Devil's advocate: Hey, at least if the police send a drone or a robot in they can't claim that the officer felt his life was in danger and that's why he or she (or a group) gunned the suspect down.

Quickly! To the Legislature!

No argument from me on anything you said there; there have been quite a few constructive posts. I didn't intend to be dismissive of the entire thread.

...if you weaponize a drone, and murder someone with it, and you maintain complete deniability... ...well at least we'll nail the fucker for weaponizing the dr- wait, shit.

Whichever. Just stick with Duh-mo-crite or Re-pube-lick-tard (to taste.)

To be fair, we have ONLY heard one side of the story so far and judging by the original poster's defensive stance against anyone who disagreed with him, it's entirely possible this "ass chewing" was mostly an exaggerated misperception in his part. The "ass chewing" from the dealer is alleged, but the ass chewing he received in this thread is on record. In my opinion his responses here don't call into question his original account. I think people here aren't addressing the OP, they are addressing "everyone who has ever made a post kinda sorta in the same vein as the OP."

Out of curiosity, you've used the words "properly" and "adequately", do you evaluate those a posteriori? (i.e. "No one who has had a firearm stolen was protecting it properly or adequately.")

Thank you for clearing up the whole "loyal customer" thing. I read this thread in one go and had to hold my tongue really hard to get to the end after reading the exchange earlier about "earning" the status of loyalty by building report as a customer. That is pants-on-head backwards. It is not desirable to be a loyal customer. It is not something you work at. It is desirable to have loyal customers... as a business. It's something the business works at. Loyal customers are a continued source of revenue and advertising. I agree with others that have said the OP simply asked at the wrong time and, possibly, in the wrong way. If the other person countered with a comment about how it couldn't be done because riggers don't work for free then that was a dick head move regardless of when the question was asked.

I'm having a hard time understanding what, "crime area you live in prohibits the availability of proper gun storage" means. Do you mean you live in an area where criminals all have plasma cutters?

Sadly, we live in a world where people have the right to spread lies for profit. There are people financially motivated to spread it. This is why so many people believe in pure, non-fact-based bullshit. Yay free speech and all, but fuck those people. A secondary effect of this is that it is very easy to find examples of people who believe just about anything and parade them out as "the opposition."

No one cares about your irrelevant "simple fact." No one is interested in discrediting it. It does not support kallend's statements, nor could it be used to refute kallend's statements even if anyone wanted to put it to that purpose. It is useless, inert, and tangential. It serves no purpose and is, in all ways associated to the conversation at hand, inoperative.

kallend's comment about carelessness of gun owners arming criminals was US centric. I included some links in post #55 to try to clarify that context, and to clarify that kallend was indicting US firearm owners for being victims of theft. You participated in that previous thread too. Similarly, kelpdiver's heroin/cocaine statement was US centric. He meant that firearms, heroin, and cocaine smuggled into the US were never legal in the US, so they were guns in the hands of US criminals, not by the fault or misfortune of legal US gun owners. Your argument that the guns were potentially stolen outside the US prior to being smuggled doesn't really help kallend's statement because this wasn't his point. kallend was trying to paint a picture with the statistic he found of hundreds of thousands of people leaving handguns on their drivers seat when they go in to a Walmart or something, and a criminal smashing a window, taking the gun, and robbing a gas station, finally getting his drug dealer business off the ground, or committing a mass shooing with it. "hundreds of thousands of crimes with hundreds of thousands of guns" he says. But that's a huge leap. Guns aren't stolen because a stolen gun is valuable to a person who wants to use it in a crime and then throw it in a mailbox, guns are stolen because they are valuable, period. People buy all sorts of stolen shit without then going on to commit crimes with them. And, criminals that do use guns to commit violent crimes have plenty of avenues to get them besides stealing them from "careless" legal owners.

I agree with his complaint that trying to build one to make all the branches of the military happy is a recipe for a very expensive program that doesn't make anyone truly happy. This, and the associated funding instability, have been the downfall of many programs in the past. That said, his understanding of modern stealth and its combat function is lacking, his contempt for "electronic junk" is laughable, and his statements about the F-35 armament are patently false.

I'm not sure they did...

So after having a chance to read the rest of the decision and dissent, my opinion is that Abramski's argument was idiotic and as a result so was the entire SCOTUS ruling addressing it. He checked the box on the 4473 form that he was, in fact, the actual person to whom the gun was being transferred during the sale. It is completely unreasonable to insist that, when answering this question, the person take into consideration events beyond the completion of a subsequent 4473 form indicating a subsequent transferee. And in disregarding these potential future events, a person would not be at odds with any "structure, history, or purpose" of the statute, as all background checks, tracability, etc. would be maintained. I don't think this ruling would prevent someone from making the above argument in a future, similar case. (maybe just don't take the check up front with "Glock 19" in the memo line )

Funny, you were congratulation kelpdiver for doing the same thing. At least be consistent. Here is the entire exchange between you and kelpdiver. In the one instance where he didn't include your entire comment, I've restored it as noted in blue... Clearly this good faith argument of yours was derailed by kelpdiver's selective quoting.

Interesting way to twist the facts of the case. He was carrying a gun and was killed by another person who also was carrying a gun, targeted apparently BECAUSE he was carrying a gun. Upon truncation of my sentence to its first third, changing its meaning entirely, I might be inclined to disagree with it. But then we'd both be arguing with a fictional party, and I wouldn't want to encroach.

As noted in the decision (which I haven't finished reading yet) it says in the instructions on the form... So relax, gifts are still fine. Since the transfer to the uncle involved an FFL and, therefore, a background check and recording of recipient info (...and had it been, say, California, confirmation that the recipient held a valid handgun safety cert) and there's nothing to suggest that the structure of the purchase had ever intended to circumvent any of that, I think it's plain to see this conviction runs afoul of the spirit of the law. That said, from what I've read so far, I don't see this decision as particularly ominous.

Having a gun did not get Joseph Wilcox killed any more than having pepper spray would have gotten Jon Meis killed had his intervention not gone as planned (for instance, if there was a second armed suspect, or if Ybarra was carrying a sidearm.)