billeisele

I've not seen this data, thanks. Unfortunately it raises more challenges. Let's assume the data is true. Does it mean the bad guys practice more, carry more than one gun, switch to other weapons, etc? The first two solutions somewhat negate the smaller mag capacity. The idea that it causes one to pause and think may hold true in some cases. I'd like to get a psychological experts thought on that. Granted, a typical long gun is quite lethal at longer ranges but in most cases that is not what occurs in mass shootings, they are close range incidents. So, why not use the common semi auto shotgun with 00 buckshot. Most hold five shells and some hold more. A shell has 9 - 12 pellets with an effective range of 40 - 60 yards. These type guns are more lethal than an AR when used by a typical shooter, less accurate aim is still effective. And then the pistols. The majority of semi auto pistols have mag capacities greater than 10. I'm aware of one that holds 21 rounds, and that's a standard mag contained within the pistol grip (not an extended mag). Four concerns/thoughts are that if mags greater than 10 rounds were banned, then what? - How in the heck do they get them off the street? The bad guys will keep them. - Is it just for scary looking rifles or does it include pistols? - If the bad guys switch to shotguns then what? - Where does it end? I asked the question earlier - Are we focusing on the wrong thing? To me, it seems that the solution is not so much the inanimate object but the bad guys. Is there an effective way to manage access without causing other undue consequences? And at the same time making tweaks to the objects.

If the outcome is anything less than murder there will be backlash. The charges are confusing, the attached document is a good explanation. It's a difficult situation and there are plenty of facts to make it complicated and confusing. No doubt the media will discus parts of the trial and the details will be ignored, the details are too complicated for the typical news coverage. Plenty of folks will think guilty, many will think innocent, and then there are some in the middle. The talking head legal experts will decipher everything and have opinions. What are the charges against Derek Chauvin? - StarTribune.com

Unfortunately the cop was not successful and lost his life. I should have said present, willing and successful, and whatever else is required to stop the assailant. Now the split hair is stuck back together. So we're back to the same old issue. Since "assault weapon" is not an officially defined term, what do you think the attributes are that define an assault weapon?

The good guy has to be present and willing. The fact that the guy wasn't stopped before killing ten does not invalidate the fact that there is a reduction in deaths when a bad guy is stopped. How many more would he have killed if he wasn't stopped? All or most bad guys are stopped by the good guys, the good guys (usually) include the police.

Seems that the fallacy in that statement is that most laws aren't impacting a Constitutional right. Help everyone understand how the gun laws in Chicago are working, and how more restrictive laws would be better. It is not a stupid argument, it is a fact. Criminals ignore laws. Making it more restrictive for a private law abiding citizens to own and provide self-protection with a gun is problematic.

The existence and ineffectiveness of these laws proves that the previous attempts failed at preventing mass gun violence. Until laws are written that focus on the root of the problem nothing gets solved. Politicians simply get reelected for doing "something."

This is a big part of the problem. Maybe were approaching the problem the wrong way. Rather than addressing law abiding gun owners maybe we should work on the law breakers. Let's find ways to take guns from criminals.

Jerry - so true. My CPA college room mate says that the tax code is some black and some white with a whole lot of gray area. He's been involved in audits where his client was bending the rules but was consistent in how it was done. The IRS said no problem. If the client had used the rule one way one year and another way the next year it would have been a problem. He always said that the most important thing is documentation to back up everything, even if you have to create it. If it is created please don't tell me. Just say here it is. The rules don't require that one makes smart decisions with their money just that they have the documentation.

Kallend - No doubt that total gun deaths is bad. Does this stat include suicides? Last stats I saw were 2020 numbers reported in 2021. They showed that 57% were suicide, and 0.11% were mass shootings and not all those were deaths. If this discussion is about violence against others then removing the suicides significantly changes the picture. But the stats for the other countries may also include suicides.

And there is the problem. Don't know the solution but term limits might help along with decreasing the power of lobbyists.

Yep. No question that the tax laws need an overhaul. And like many other things more enforcement of existing laws is needed.

Another mindless accusation that is incorrect. Check the stats on injury and death with knives. Perhaps those should labeled as assault weapons and be banned. Check the stats on death from prescription drugs. Hmmm....close down the pharmaceutical companies. The only thing blind is people saying that certain types of guns should be banned while ignoring other types of weapons. A 12 gauge shotgun loaded with #2 buck shot is just as or more deadly than a typical semi auto rifle. And then there are the semi auto pistols that hold 20+ rounds. And the list goes on and on. Once the facts are fully evaluated it's easy to conclude that banning guns won't work. Anyone that thinks it works should look at how well banning illegal drugs is working. I'm all for sensible legislation and have discussed this in the past. Training, background checks on flea market and gun show sales is needed.

So 1) yes, there are plenty of legal ways to avoid paying taxes. Anyone that uses those rules is not cheating. For instance, with a sole proprietorship of LLC, one can write off equipment investment, and so many other things. Those write offs reduce taxes. In some cases one can divert "profits" to a retirement account and essentially have zero taxable income. Anyone that has the ability to do that and doesn't, could be seen as stupid. Some say that the most important company asset is a good tax accountant.

I've always wondered what the increase in revenue would be and how much the tax rates would be lowered if people "followed the rules." If no one cheated. If no one claimed more charitable donations than they actually gave, reported tip income, didn't inflate business expenses and hide revenue, if the home repair and fix-it people claimed all revenue, and the list goes on.

Painful for sure. Too funny.

Haven't read that anywhere. Is that your opinion or facts from elsewhere?

Seven accusers, that's troubling. But...some of the accusations seem to be fairly thin. To have someone say, "it made me feel uncomfortable", hmmm. it could be quite difficult to know where the threshold is to "make someone uncomfortable." What a mess we have going on. Plenty of folks piling on saying he should resign. 16 of 19 House Democrats in New York's delegation are in the group, along with Adam Schiff. Knowing what Schiff has done it must be difficult to bear being judged by him.

The new cars are full of this stuff and more. Auto headlamps, auto wipers, brake hold, auto emergency braking, proximity warnings, cruise control with auto distance following, etc. Some of it can be turned off and some of it can't. Lane departure can usually be turned off but auto distance with cruise control can't. In GMC trucks the lane departure vibrates the seat based on the direction of the departure. On the Chevy Blazer the auto start-stop can't be turned off, on the Explorer it can. Granted that's not a safety feature, more of a pollution/gas mileage feature. Many vehicles have warnings if it senses erratic driving, it suggests you pull over for coffee and a break. It would be interesting to know how much of the cost increase in cars is due to the mandatory safety features. It sure makes one think twice about the extended warranty just to covers the electronics, a backyard mechanic can't fix this stuff with a wrench and screw driver. Seems that the gov't focused on safety features for cars because they are considered almost mandatory in a "western industrial nation", and that the death and injury rates were quickly climbing. It's a little scary that a teenager can take a simple driving test under ideal conditions in low traffic areas and then have a license to drive at night, in the rain, on a crowded interstate. Also scary that there is no retesting at older ages. That's in SC, don't know about other states. But that license is valid in every state. Other than cost, wonder why there are not simulators for training and testing. Seems that they wouldn't be that expensive. A prospective driver could be given all kinds of scenarios with the computer generating a grade. Anyone could rent time on one to learn to drive and sharpen skills. It could let folks play with their phone and system controls then play back the video so they could see how it impacted their driving. The options are unlimited.

Joe - The mess going on today started a long time ago. It would be nice if there were some folks that could start to tone down the rhetoric, walk back the nastiness and start representing all Americans.

The guy deserves to have the harassment allegations vetted. One of them seems fairly weak but that's based on what I heard from the media and there's no trust that they are providing full or unbiased info. The sooner an investigation is started and finished the better. The COVID death stuff, to me, is much worse. That's being investigated by the FBI. Hopefully that investigation will be complete and unbiased. We'll see.

"Know" and "heard of" are two different things. Some won't admit to knowing due to that negative association stuff but no harm if one has heard of him.

All that is fine and dandy except you have to pay for it. Not being connected to the "grid" definitely made the problem worse. That's the one part of this discussion that is missing - paying for the huge investment. Anything is technically feasible if one throws enough money at it. The questions is - does it make economic sense? The generator owners and gas pipe owners made the economic decisions to not add the "cold weather" package to those technologies. If they had, the electricity would not have been interrupted but electricity prices would have been higher. All the technologies work if money is spent to make them work. But those additional costs go into the cost of electricity. This graph was posted earlier. What is shows is no surprise, and exactly how these technologies work and how they are economically dispatched. Nuclear is base load and run at full capacity. For this system, coal is the next part of the base load. There is some variation in output most likely due to outages and system balancing. Natural gas is next and used for peaking and load control. It can quickly be ramped up or down to meet demand. Then there is solar and wind that operate when their fuel is available. With this system mix they can manage the load without too much trouble. The more renewable output and the lower the system load the harder it is to manage the fossil generators. Gas turbines aren't too difficult but a coal or gas fired plant can't cycle down too much without being very difficult to operate. Usually they will be shut off if the output gets down in the 35-40% range. It varies based on the design but the point is they can't easily ramp up and down. When they are shut off they must go thru a number of steps and it can easily be 6 - 10 hours before they can be restarted. That whole process is expensive (easily $100 - $500K) and would end up in the cost of electricity. You can't shut it off in the evening when the load drops and then just fire it off for the morning wake up. When they are operating below full load the efficiency is reduced and there are other issues that negatively impact the life span of major components. All those things increase operating costs. There is some economical mix of nuclear, coal, gas and renewables where they all play nice together and the customer gets the most economical price for electricity. That statement ignores environmental issues - the cost of pollution, landfilling turbine blades, battery management, and the list of other stuff that makes this more complicated.

Folks, we've have a minor problem with the aircraft and will be returning to Denver. Your arrival to Hawaii will be delayed.

Doubt that additional federal regulation is the answer. The last cold event was 1940. The folks that built the generation made purchase decisions each time they bought a generator. Wind turbines are available with heated gear boxes, motors and blades. Coal plants can be built for cold weather. Nuclear safety devices aren't supposed to get wet and freeze. Natural gas pipelines can be installed and made operational in cold climates. About the generators: the utility is held to a "reasonable and prudent" standard when their rate increase requests are made. The regulators look at the costs in the rate filing and decide if they are reasonable and prudent. Certain costs will be disallowed - such as alcohol, first class travel, employee recreational clubs, lobbying expense, certain advertising, glamorous offices, excess construction, and others. The utilities deal with the regulators on a regular basis and are familiar with how they make decisions. I suspect that the utilities knew that if they had bought the "cold weather" package the additional cost would have been disallowed. The regulators, in SC, are appointed and then elected by the politicians. Politicians are pestered by their electors. The public hates rate increases and they raise cane about everything. The utility would argue that the additional expense is justified because once in every 80 years it gets cold enough that it is needed. The intervenors in the rate case, Wal Mart, large energy users, the military, the consumer advocate, and anyone else that wants to testify, would argue that the cold weather package was not needed. So, they are having a once in 80 year event and, no surprise, stuff froze. The TX situation and every other grid is massively complicated. No one thing caused this problem and federal regulation won't fix it. Well, it could. They could easily require more redundancy, additional transmission capacity, more dispersed generation and just about anything else. That's fine except it costs tons of money. The expense would be paid by consumers. And consumers hate rate increases. Reliability is always a balancing act between the two. We have the same problem in SC after a hurricane. After Hugo in 1989, 31 years ago, everyone screamed, "if power lines were underground we wouldn't have this problem!" That's partially true except there are other problems with UG power lines that don't exist with overhead lines. And, it costs tons of money that no one wants pay for in a rate increase. As electricity is restored the next layer of problems is being revealed. Lack of water. The construction standards in some areas didn't contemplate this extreme. Many homes have detached garages connected to the house by a short breezeway. The copper line comes up the wall of the unheated garage into the attic area and over to the house. The pipe freezes and splits. As it warms up the leaks are evident. There is a shortage of plumbers and plumbing supplies. My buddy shipped 100' of Pex and a box of fittings to his son. There is enough stuff to fix a few dozen houses. The neighbors will luv him. Just about every problem can be prevented or minimized if one throws enough money at it. Most don't want to pay for prevention. What a mess, but no different than natural disasters in other areas of the country.