These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
There was a notice buried in the TOS that they could restrict movies but the marketing material and press they did when they switched to $10 plans was that any regularly priced 2D movie at participating theaters was allowed. This week they started actively blocking certain new movies like Red Sparrow and Death Wish in order to try to direct users to other movies or specific theaters.
It is clear that this weekend was a proof of concept for MoviePass to see if they can alter the bottom line for specific movies and theaters. If they got positive results from this weekend's test, you can bet the data will be forwarded to every theater and studio in the industry to show how much of an impact MoviePass has and then it becomes an extortion racket.
This was all expected from the start, but it doesn't make it any less disappointing that MoviePass is now making that pivot from a company that sells a service to the general public to a company that sells the general public to other businesses as a service.
Interesting. Sidenote: a 30+ year old film Death Wish (about a woman who's dying young and how her life becomes a reality tv show) predicted AI-written novels.
"Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed)."
You assume that there _was_ a man and that he had a firearm. Both are likely to be false, especially the latter.
"There's some reason you have police, military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this aspect of security."
No, the police cannot protect the citizen from crime but they can report and investigate crime. Occasionally the police intercept a crime-in-progress. But their intervention is optional: officers may pass by a crime in progress during shift change; otherwise they'll be writing an offense report for hours. Old saying: "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."
Also courts have consistently held that police are not required to protect someone. So people in the USA are in general allowed to protect themselves.
"is it as easy and as simple to get a gun in USA as it's projected in films or in the media? "
It was once much easier: IIRC in the "Death Wish" movie series, Charles Bronson's character obtains his firearms via mail-order. Today it's a more involved process:
TO PURCHASE A FIREARM FROM AN FFL DEALER:
The buyer must complete and sign a "4473 form" verifying his fitness to own a firearm (to lie is a crime). The buyer must provide identification information (e.g., driver's license). The dealer phones the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). NICS is given the buyer information plus the fact that the purchase is either a long gun or a handgun (no firearm serial numbers, etc. are given to NICS). NICS does a background check and either allows or disallows the sale. The buyer pays the dealer and is given the firearm. Afterward, in a separate "bound-book", the dealer records the 4473 info along with the firearms' identifying information. The 4473 forms and the bound-book are kept forever and, if the dealer goes out of business, those records are given to the government.
So to form a registry of all purchased firearms in the USA would require linking the NICS information (which legally is mandated to be destroyed after a short period of time) with the 4473 information. Federal gun control laws have driven relentlessly toward that goal (combined NICS + 4473 = firearms registration) all the while saying that a firearms registry is fantasy. But there's more...
TO PURCHASE A FIREARM FROM AN INDIVIDUAL:
The buyer must provide proof to the seller that he may legally purchase a firearm in that state. This varies from state to state but usually consists of the buyer showing a driver's license from that state and then stating that he may legally own a firearm (essentially the questions on the 4473 form must be accounted for). To lie is a crime. No NICS check is performed and no records need be kept.
This latter transaction is often termed the "Gun Show Loophole" although it can occur anywhere (no gun show is required). It is a private firearms transfer between private individuals: not dealer to customer, or customer to dealer. It is termed a "loophole" by anti-gunners because it prevents tracing firearms' with the combined NICS + 4473 information: it would render a firearms registry at least partially incomplete.
So today we are two steps away from full firearms registration:
- eliminate private firearms transfers between private individuals,
- allow the government to collect and keep forever all NICS and 4473 information.
PROBLEMS
- It is unknown whether the (passed) NICS check information is discarded after 24 hours as is mandated by law (a failed NICS check is kept longer for investigation since it indicates a crime may has been committed). One who was thorough would inquire as to the logging and backup systems used by NICS. Worst case: ATF has all NICS check data in a database.
- 4473 form information may be destroyed after 20 years. However the dealer's bound-book must be given to a business' new owner or handed over to the ATF when the business closes. Worst case: ATF has lots of 4473 information in a database.
- There have apparently been instances where the ATF scanned (illegally) dealers' 4473 forms en masse during audits.
- Worst case overall: ATF (illegally) has a combined NICS + 4473 database which is a partial registry of legally-purchased firearms in the USA.
Hacker Cinema
4 comments on Hacker News
These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
There was a notice buried in the TOS that they could restrict movies but the marketing material and press they did when they switched to $10 plans was that any regularly priced 2D movie at participating theaters was allowed. This week they started actively blocking certain new movies like Red Sparrow and Death Wish in order to try to direct users to other movies or specific theaters.
It is clear that this weekend was a proof of concept for MoviePass to see if they can alter the bottom line for specific movies and theaters. If they got positive results from this weekend's test, you can bet the data will be forwarded to every theater and studio in the industry to show how much of an impact MoviePass has and then it becomes an extortion racket.
This was all expected from the start, but it doesn't make it any less disappointing that MoviePass is now making that pivot from a company that sells a service to the general public to a company that sells the general public to other businesses as a service.
Interesting. Sidenote: a 30+ year old film Death Wish (about a woman who's dying young and how her life becomes a reality tv show) predicted AI-written novels.
"Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed)."
You assume that there _was_ a man and that he had a firearm. Both are likely to be false, especially the latter.
"There's some reason you have police, military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this aspect of security."
No, the police cannot protect the citizen from crime but they can report and investigate crime. Occasionally the police intercept a crime-in-progress. But their intervention is optional: officers may pass by a crime in progress during shift change; otherwise they'll be writing an offense report for hours. Old saying: "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."
Also courts have consistently held that police are not required to protect someone. So people in the USA are in general allowed to protect themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
"is it as easy and as simple to get a gun in USA as it's projected in films or in the media? "
It was once much easier: IIRC in the "Death Wish" movie series, Charles Bronson's character obtains his firearms via mail-order. Today it's a more involved process:
TO PURCHASE A FIREARM FROM AN FFL DEALER:
The buyer must complete and sign a "4473 form" verifying his fitness to own a firearm (to lie is a crime). The buyer must provide identification information (e.g., driver's license). The dealer phones the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). NICS is given the buyer information plus the fact that the purchase is either a long gun or a handgun (no firearm serial numbers, etc. are given to NICS). NICS does a background check and either allows or disallows the sale. The buyer pays the dealer and is given the firearm. Afterward, in a separate "bound-book", the dealer records the 4473 info along with the firearms' identifying information. The 4473 forms and the bound-book are kept forever and, if the dealer goes out of business, those records are given to the government.
http://www.atf.gov/applications/e4473/
http://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/atf-f-4473.html
So to form a registry of all purchased firearms in the USA would require linking the NICS information (which legally is mandated to be destroyed after a short period of time) with the 4473 information. Federal gun control laws have driven relentlessly toward that goal (combined NICS + 4473 = firearms registration) all the while saying that a firearms registry is fantasy. But there's more...
TO PURCHASE A FIREARM FROM AN INDIVIDUAL:
The buyer must provide proof to the seller that he may legally purchase a firearm in that state. This varies from state to state but usually consists of the buyer showing a driver's license from that state and then stating that he may legally own a firearm (essentially the questions on the 4473 form must be accounted for). To lie is a crime. No NICS check is performed and no records need be kept.
This latter transaction is often termed the "Gun Show Loophole" although it can occur anywhere (no gun show is required). It is a private firearms transfer between private individuals: not dealer to customer, or customer to dealer. It is termed a "loophole" by anti-gunners because it prevents tracing firearms' with the combined NICS + 4473 information: it would render a firearms registry at least partially incomplete.
So today we are two steps away from full firearms registration:
- eliminate private firearms transfers between private individuals,
- allow the government to collect and keep forever all NICS and 4473 information.
PROBLEMS
- It is unknown whether the (passed) NICS check information is discarded after 24 hours as is mandated by law (a failed NICS check is kept longer for investigation since it indicates a crime may has been committed). One who was thorough would inquire as to the logging and backup systems used by NICS. Worst case: ATF has all NICS check data in a database.
- 4473 form information may be destroyed after 20 years. However the dealer's bound-book must be given to a business' new owner or handed over to the ATF when the business closes. Worst case: ATF has lots of 4473 information in a database.
- There have apparently been instances where the ATF scanned (illegally) dealers' 4473 forms en masse during audits.
- Worst case overall: ATF (illegally) has a combined NICS + 4473 database which is a partial registry of legally-purchased firearms in the USA.