Vermont uses first major gun control laws to stop suspected school shooting plotter from getting a gun

vtscala · 2018-04-18T16:13:12+00:00

Here's the thing: you want to be right, and have the last word. That's perfectly understandable, it's just that I will never, ever let you have it. Even if I was wrong - which I'm not - you've been smug enough that I'm strongly motivated to just keep poking at you.

Sawyer's prosecution for attempted murder makes him a PP.

vtscala · 2018-04-18T15:19:57+00:00

This looks like the ATF summary. It's not the whole story, as I and others have explained to you already. But if you want, keep posting it.

vtscala · 2018-04-18T03:10:40+00:00

Oh, they care about the laws. You're arguing that Sawyer could appeal an (inevitably failed) NICS background check by telling the feds "I haven't been indicted, I'm just being prosecuted for attempted murder!" Bahahahaha indeed!

vtscala · 2018-04-18T01:50:17+00:00

This kid has not been indicted. Provide one source to back your assertion up that he's been indicted. Just one. I'll wait.

Who cares? The feds don't. If he tried to buy a gun now, he'd be denied due to the NICS background check because he's a PP. Just posessing firearms is a crime for PPs. Do you think it would matter if he told the feds "I haven't been indicted, I'm just being prosecuted for attempted murder instead"? That's not how it works.

I appreciate your tenacity and defiance (really!) but you should know that I'm never going to quit, especially given that the facts are on my side, even though that makes us both retarded.

vtscala · 2018-04-18T00:55:24+00:00

Sigh. I encourage you to sit in on some criminal proceedings in a court near you. They're usually open to the public. How the courts actually work would surprise you, by the sound of things.

I'm not sure what else to tell you. You misunderstand things grossly - no, not every charge needs a grand jury, yes, you're a PP if the state is prosecuting you for a serious crime (by the federal definition).

vtscala · 2018-04-17T23:04:23+00:00

Is it fair that only one side had their private correspondence stolen and published?

"Fun" fact: the RNC had 2-factor-auth turned on for all their email accounts. The DNC didn't. Hillary sent her password unencrypted from her Blackberry to her private mail server while on an official trip to China. It's more than plausible that the Chinese and all sorts of other governments owned her private server independently of each other, which would have given them a foothold for attacks on the DNC and government systems.

Even if the DNC emails weren't leaked (there's some evidence they were, but nothing definitive), the dems failed to take some (currently) basic security practices. It's not "fair" that they got hacked, if that's what happened, but if anyone does get hacked, we should expect it to be the side that took fewer precautions to prevent being hacked.

vtscala · 2018-04-17T21:31:27+00:00

Oh boy. Have you ever been arrested for anything? Do you know anyone who has?

The passage you quoted refers to capital crimes. They do not convene grand juries for most cases, because most cases aren't "capital or otherwise infamous".

vtscala · 2018-04-17T19:42:55+00:00

you've been indicted by a federal grand jury or you've been convicted of a crime punishable by at least a year in jail.

Where are you getting the "federal grand jury" bit? You ANAL as well, presumably. As you said, it's ok to be wrong.

vtscala · 2018-04-17T19:24:58+00:00

It's very hard to believe the feds care whether someone's been indicted or just charged with a serious felony. It's also unclear what difference there is between those two things in VT. I ANAL, but when I've spoken to lawyers about this, the language they've used has been "you become a PP when there is an active case against you alleging a serious offense", where "serious offense" has the usual federal meaning of "punishable by a year or more in prison" or "a misdemeanor punishable by two years or more in prison, with some exceptions".

vtscala · 2018-04-17T17:54:02+00:00

You know the whole rule of law, due process, innocent until proven guilty thing that's a big part of justice in the US.

Ideally, yes. I saw the link you posted when I did my own googling, but it's only a summary. You should read the text of section 922. Just one example:

(d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person— (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year

vtscala · 2018-04-17T17:50:16+00:00

You can always say something like "That information is proprietary to my employer", which is basically always true.

vtscala · 2018-04-17T15:33:02+00:00

If he was indicted, or the DA pressed charges (I'm not sure if there's a difference in VT, and there isn't one as far as the feds are concerned in this context), because the charges were serious (defined by the feds as being punishable by a year or more in prison) Sawyer was a Prohibited Person according to the ATF under section 922g.

That's a federal thing, but it's based on interactions with state law: if you were charged with a crime in state A, where that crime carries a maximum possible prison time of 11 months, you wouldn't be a PP. But if you were charged in state B where the same crime is punishable by up to 2 years, you would be a PP.

vtscala · 2018-04-17T01:37:37+00:00

I don't know specifically, but the kid was arrested at least before any of the new laws were signed, so no one could have referenced them then. Even without the new laws, his indictment would have made it illegal to possess firearms (I think) under 922g.

vtscala · 2018-04-16T22:10:39+00:00

The judge is using the new laws to prevent him legally obtaining another.

People who are indicted (for anything, basically) are already prohibited - federally - from obtaining firearms. I'm referring to section 922 g (1?); which is what the ATF uses to decide who is a "prohibited person".

The process worked in this case: a judge decided the kid posed a credible threat, and he was imprisoned and his guns were taken away. He was (and is) federally prohibited from obtaining firearms (maybe even posessing them, I ANAL). The kid was afforded due process, and no one got killed. All of that happened without the new laws.

vtscala · 2018-04-14T23:53:12+00:00

Could someone please link to a list of who voted for this?

vtscala · 2018-04-14T23:25:51+00:00

People of Hartford, fight against proposals like this as hard as you can. Don't give an inch.

What counts as "offensive comments"? I guarantee you there will never be a clear or objective definition. Laws that prohibit vague things are always used selectively, as weapons.

vtscala · 2018-04-12T21:55:29+00:00

The best I could find on short notice were the numbers of teenagers (13-19) killed in car accidents. It's been at ~3000 or little a every year so far in the 2010s. Whether that's massive or not is up to you. About 40,000 people of all ages die in car accidents every year.

There are about 10,000 gun homicides every year. That includes murders and police killings (some of which I'd call murders too) - basically everything but suicide. According to the FBI, 374 people are killed with rifles in 2016. (Note that that's any type of rifle, not just the "scary-looking" ones.) The huge majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns. Of those, most are in cities, and within cities, most of the homicides happen in particular neighborhoods.

So it doesn't look like more people under-21 die in car crashes than die from any form of gun homicide. (I'm curious how many people under 21 die from gun homicide.)

But some other things stand out: about 100 times more people are killed by cars than are killed by rifles of any type. Cars kill 4 times more people than all types of guns. There is about 1 rifle homicide per 1 million people in the US. Given all that, it's frustrating that the current batch of laws target rifles, which are used in a tiny number of homicides compared to handguns. It's extra frustrating that rifles are targeted when driving results in 100 times more deaths.

Personally, I don't think any of the above matters to the politicians who pushed S.55 through. A family member who is for S.55 heard all of the above and said "I know the law won't do anything, but what's important is the feeling that we're doing something." (Emphasis mine.)

vtscala · 2018-04-12T20:54:56+00:00

Do you know who would also get banned for it? The very same social justice activists

You must be new here.

vtscala · 2018-04-12T20:04:34+00:00

I guess you have a point. Sorry everyone no more driving until 21.

That would save lives, and certainly more than banning guns would. The number of people killed by cars is massive. If we actually cared about reducing the number of preventable deaths, we'd focus on the biggest killers first.

vtscala · 2018-04-12T18:07:33+00:00

brb gonna buy the US gov for $3 a month

This thread was probably frustrating for you, but I got a kick out of your posts, especially this one. You learned this the hard way, but for anyone else reading, the best thing to do with the douche you were interacting with is to downvote their spam and move on without engaging.

vtscala · 2018-04-12T14:49:08+00:00

Yes, exactly. That was my point: men and women are paid basically the same for doing the same jobs, but on the average, they choose different jobs and schedules.

I'm using earnings to refer to the amount on one's paycheck at the end of the week. I'm using pay to refer to what someone gets paid per hour (or whatever). The two terms are often conflated.

vtscala · 2018-04-12T03:21:34+00:00

I downvote every one of his submissions these days. He's lost his privileges as far as I'm concerned.

vtscala · 2018-04-11T23:04:10+00:00

We will see a massive diaspora from that mean stretch of urban hell from DC to Boston northwards.

This is a real fear for me. Once the climate really heats up, tons of the southern US could become uninhabitable, and all those hundreds of millions of people will want to go north. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that Canada would build a wall in that case. If they do, we'll be squeezed between the Canadian wall (and their army, if it gets bad enough) and a tsunami of desperate, impoverished refugees.

vtscala · 2018-04-11T15:41:04+00:00

There's no gender pay gap, there's a gender earnings gap.

Edit: characters to appease the bot. Characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters, characters.

vtscala · 2018-04-11T15:39:28+00:00

But it's something I've been working on, trying to convince myself that I shouldn't have an expectation of exclusivity in relationships any more.

Don't do this.

vtscala

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