Certainly, it is perfectly valid to just want ideal outcomes for all individuals regardless of the system. You are also not required in any way to discuss your viewpoints with anyone. I will thank you for your time up to this point, and wish you a wonderful day.

I do hope the judge looked him dead in the eyes at the sentencing and said “Bad dog” before rubbing his nose in the evidence bags.

On the positive side, he should be out after 2.13 human years. Sooner with good behavior and completion of an obedience class from a licensed training academy.

That makes the conservative talking point of anchor babies a real thing. Make your way onto US soil to give birth by any means necessary, and suddenly you are granted a pathway to citizenship and a guaranteed legal status from day one?

That kind of massive shortcut of the immigration system would break the system. Birth tourism would skyrocket along with all other forms of illegal immigration. There is a reason no country on earth allows that.

Do you not think that doing so would be a huge incentive driving illegal border crossings or visa overstays to take such a shortcut? Do you think that creating a parallel alternative immigration pathway such as that is a good thing?

I certainly disagree with how the trump administration is operating, and fuck anyone who says non-citizens don’t have a right to a day in court, but how can carving out loopholes and shortcuts be good for the long term health of the system? Unless crippling the system to the point of implosion to cause a reform is the goal, but I find that to be too close to the conservatives crippling other public sector programs to cause private sector reform to profit off it.

This is a bit of a catch 22, the child wasn’t deported her parents were. I don’t even doubt that ICE was lazy and didn’t make sure the mother knew what was happening and every option available to their child. This is a shit show how Trump is handling mass deportation instead of expanding the immigration courts to process the backlogs and get everyone their constitutionally protected day in court. ICE has been done a disservice by Trump and deserves a lot of the shit the department is getting.

The child is a US citizen, 100%, but that doesn’t offer protection from prosecution to their parents. A 2 year old who’s US citizen parent or parents commit a crime will have their parent/parents taken away when put in jail, and then be given into the custody of a relative or taken into foster care. This is not unique to immigration.

Would you rather the child have been unilaterally taken from their mother and placed into US foster care when no family was identified that could take them in the US? Then we are separating children from their families, which is fucked up.

There historically have been limited stays of deportation available for illegal immigrant parents of US citizen children, but this administration is obviously being extremely tough on those. If you want to give automatic deportation immunity to anyone who has a child on US soil until those children are legally adults, you turn “anchor babies” from being basically a myth into an actual reality.

There is no perfect solution for any of this.

I hate shopping at Lowe’s now because they physically removed the regular checkouts and only have a square of self checkouts. They did this so one “cashier” can watch over everything, saving labor on multiple cashiers. They also paired down every other department so it’s just as hard (or possibly harder) to get assistance in a department as at Home Depot. Feels like I’m watch the death spiral in full swing.

Less shoppers means less staff. Less staff means service suffers. Poor service means less shoppers. Rinse and repeat. This is happening at almost every brick and mortar retail business though, not just Lowe’s. It’s like the entire economy has turned into Circuit City trying to keep the lights on.

I was very concerned scrolling the comments that it looked like no one was going to mentioned Margaret Weis. She is an amazing author stand alone, and Dragon Lance was one of the first big Fantasy series I really cut my teeth on.

I totally misread ‘good viable’ as good vibes, and immediately agreed despite having no substantive idea what that would be. Fleet of Magic School buses driven by assorted Ms. Frizzle’s? Cheech and Chong’s Uber service? Limo service where you get to answer suggestive Family Feud surveys with Steve Harvey? I don’t know, but I’m totally down for good vibes alternatives to driving.

Being pro-tariff can (and should) be like being pro-modern medicine. Targeted use saves lives, but the only difference between medicine and poison is the dosage and treatment vector. Tariffs should be used like every other regulation on the economy, but since Reagan the dosages of every regulation have all been way out of whack either way too low or way too high. There is a place for some protectionism, just not like this obviously.

Left when 3rd party apps were killed, stayed because I believe in the concept of the fediverse.

Still have my Reddit accounts, but just hardly use them. There is still a much larger active user base there for a bunch of stuff so I haven’t gone scorched earth yet, but Lemmy is my social media home now.

Indeed, we should eliminate all landlords and then everyone who wants to not live with family or friends who already own a house should obviously just get a 15 or 30 year mortgage. I’m sure you qualified for one at 18, or maybe 26. And it is really easy and convenient to sell your house/condo/apartment every few years if you want or need to move regularly. There is never a viable condition for renting. But if somehow there were to be a magical condition where one would rent, then clearly the trading of goods and services for money only works if each transaction is specifically priced to only and exactly cover the input costs. Making profit is immoral after all. You know what they say, people and businesses only exist because of the joy derived from watching others consume the products of their labor. Has this comment gotten annoyingly snarky yet?

Now we as a society should start treating housing as a commodity and produce it in vast numbers so that supply continuously meets or exceeds demands. We should also implement a Georgist land use tax to prevent mass corporate ownership of housing so that housing prices fall comparably to what they were in the 50s and 60s. We probably want to slowly phase that change in though, because housing as an investment is the only thing propping up the middle class currently, and if every primary residence home owner was suddenly under water by double or tripple or more of their existing mortgages then bad things happen. Tenent owned cooperative housing complexes might even be cool too.

Thank you for even objectively considering my perspective. The 2nd amendment has a metric shitload of strong feelings surrounding it, which makes it an outlier from all the other rights in the constitution currently. I personally believe every right needs to be defended equally zealously, because there is always a tendency towards erroding them. I wouldn’t even put it past some politicians to actually try my ludicrous voter suppression parts by offering monetary incentives to not vote in districts that aren’t already gerrymandered to hell. Or the same for 4th amendment rights. Looking at you, fascist wing of the GOP.

The constitution is intended to grow and evolve with the country, which is why we have ways to do this. It’s not easy though, by design. Obviously SOMETHING needs to change, be it guns, mental health, policing, wealth equality, or personal security. I, once again personally, think that the root cause of violent crime lies under wealth inequality, lack of feeling secure and productive in society/their community, and physical/mental health rather than just access to firearms. I also think it is easier to get a simple majority of the country to agree to fixing our broken healthcare system, and make substantive steps to curb wealth inequality than it is to get 75% of both houses of Congress and then 75% of State Governments to agree to reduce or eliminate gun rights. But I know I’m an outlier here myself, and there are better minds than mine out there.

I’d love to have a viable candidate to vote for that wants to keep individual gun rights, implement a UBI in place of the rats nest of gutted social services, offer universal healthcare to include mental health, fix the tax code, close loopholes, tax automation, and codify abortion, gay marriage, and LGBTQ rights. But since that wouldn’t rile up the extreme ends of the voter bases, I won’t be holding my breath.

Until 75% of the country agrees with you that they don’t want or need the right to bear arms, everything listed after step 1 is unconstitutional. The reason being that you cannot add cost or hoops to jump through to exercise rights. Test all of these with any other right and see how fucked up it is. The following should be taken slightly tongue in cheek, but illustrating the difference in treatment people have with the second clear through absurdity.

Step 1: Offer major tax incentives to not vote or wave your right to searches and seizures. Skip the presidential election? $2000 tax write off. Allow the police to search your home and vehicle at any time they want? $5000 tax write off.

Step 2: You have to have a state issued ID for services. Could we charge a license fee to access the polls, or perform any sort of protest action? Want to vote? $200 for your voter ID stamp that lasts 4 years. Want to join a protest or picket? The police might need to keep the peace. $50 per protest.

Step 2b: Along with these fees, before you can vote you need to attend an extensive class on the people and issues on the ballot, run by either the DNC or RNC based on if your state is red or blue (or whomever paid the most for the position). If you want to post politically inclined statements in print or electronically, you need to attend journalism training on safe words and opinions. Understand that if you hurt or offended someone with statements you made, you are legally responsible for that distress.

Step 2c: After initial voter education training, journalism training, and jury process training, you must attend at least biannual refresher courses to ensure you are educated on the recommended politicians and proposed laws, changes in acceptable speech and societal norms, and how to be a good juror to retain the right to a free jury. These can be fun. A get together of all your fellow citizens as you are reeducated on how the government wants you to use your rights.

This might not prevent people from voting for the wrong candidates and laws, but the remaining model citizens will keep the discord in society down. China has a vastly higher number of citizens than the US, but doesn’t have all of the political instability and fighting. I think the difference is the mandatory citizen training and reeducation camps.

So then the apartments and condos become more expensive due to skyrocketing land values, not solving the problem of affordable housing? You can expand current low density zones with limited medium density without impacting values too much, but NIMBY concerns aren’t completely crazy. Either new zones are created for multifamily high density and medium density housing instead of opening single family low density zones for these projects, or we accept that as a society we are fine crushing a percentage of the middle class to solve housing for the lower classes. The top 10% may take a hit on real estate dips from rental properties, but not crippling. We can spread the damage slowly, but houses losing 10-30% value will cause a miniature 2008 wherever that happens.

This was caused by housing becoming a cornerstone step into and for remaining in the middle class instead of being a commodity like it was pre 1970/80. That probably wasn’t a good idea, but changing that removes the largest remaining leg of the middle class. All options moving forward will suck I think, and it will take a lot of work to resolve.

It’s easier to dehumanize and homogenize the opposition than view them as people with real convictions. It happens on both sides, and it’s getting worse and worse as the polarization increases. Driven by the media and the 24 hour news cycle, capitalized on by the DNC and RNC, and keeping everyone fighting amongst ourselves instead of looking too closely at the accelerating wealth gap and banding together by class to restore healthy and competitive capitalism.

It was super shocking to find the Republicans actually knocking the third leg out of their wedge issues stool. All they really have is gun rights now, as the regular culture war stuff isn’t nearly as powerful as abortion was. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next 2 election cycles, but so help me if the Democrats manage to get back control of all 3 and STILL don’t codify abortion rights, gay marriage rights, interracial marriage, etc so they can capitalize on these suddenly stronger wedge issues. Again. So God damned pissed off at the Obama admin still because of that. Also the lack of federal legalization/decriminalization. And this is from a pro 2A former classical libertarian who wants the government shrunk by replacing all of the bloated agencies and welfare programs with a simple and solid universal healthcare system and true UBI, funded with a aimple tax code with no loopholes that incorporates something of a Georgist land tax.

110% with you there, but since bribery and graft is legal in the US only corporate tools get selected by the corporate parties. This is further reinforced by keeping the 2 party system entrenched with FPTP voting. I know I’ll never get perfect to vote for, but I’d like to at least get an option that would earn a C+ or higher to vote for.

Not personally a fan of general increases in gun control because I don’t think many of the ideas floated would help more than they would hurt law abiding citizens, but it really should be free and quick for anyone to request a background check for private party gun sales and thus should be mandatory. My own personal experience is background checks are done at my local gun shows, but yes there should be mandatory universal background checks and this 100% can be improved.

Federally mandated waiting periods would be hard and burdensome to enforce on private party sales, but I’d be open to discussions on how it could be done. Red flag laws are also tricky because we have a presumption of innocence and protection against searches and seizures, but if it requires that you get to face a judge before they take your guns away then once again, an argument worth having. I argue against security theater gun control, and because I believe any restrictions of constitutional rights should by default be argued against since we need damn solid reasons to restrict rights.

I think gun safety training should be mandatory as part of the US education system starting from the beginning of school. There are more guns than people in the US, so odds are good that many children will come into contact with them at some point, and they should know what they are and how to be safe. Unfortunately, the left acts like this will indoctrinate children towards being pro guns like the right thinks sex education will make kids have sex. Leaving these basic life knowledge “up to the family” to teach is just such a shitty idea.

The issue of licensing is tricky because unlike driving a car, gun ownership is a constitutional right and we do not have a good track record of being fair and equitable when we make practicing rights require any “cost of entry”. Other than that and as has been mentioned already, many places require licenses and extra training to concealed carry, and if you are reckless with guns or just even with criminal behavior you can lose your gun rights.

Also, even if mass shootings just weren’t a thing I think having trauma kits along with AEDs in public areas is just good practice, and adding hostile attacker drills to existing fire, earthquake, tornado, etc drills is also probably good practice. The more emergency situations people are even somewhat trained to “handle”, the better they react to both known and unknown emergencies. When the brain is overwhelmed in an emergency, having any ingrained reflex your subconscious can fall back on prevents freezing or panicked random action.

So the issue there is that it directly conflicts with the right to privacy, presumption of innocence, and your right to practice your constitutional rights. The government and law enforcement, hell even your neighbors or your HOA, cannot just check you or your stuff out to make sure you’re not doing bad things. We can’t mandate that you can only practice your religion at designated churches. You aren’t required to go get your free speech pass from City Hall that then allows you to go to approved places to discuss politics. What you are describing is not really a new and interesting way to check and enforce laws, secret police and dictators have been doing that for centuries. “If you don’t have anything to hide” is one of the worst things you could hear from law enforcement.

I’m going to throw a curve ball here and say yes, obviously the purpose of a gun is to kill things. Americans have an inherent right to self defense through use of arms, which is the entire purpose of the 2nd amendment. Killing animals for food is of course another common task, along with livestock protection, but self defense against other humans using force was enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The founders thought about the fact that these arms could be used in crime and violence, and decided that freedom comes with risk and it was worth that risk. The country was founded on principles that the government is not there to provide perfect safety to all individuals and to dictate their lives, but instead set ground rules and let people live their lives however they see fit. There are consequences for actions, not preventing all actions with negative consequences. There’s a reason that the phrase “those who give up freedom for safety deserve neither” is such a famous (or infamous) quote in America.

Many people may feel they do not need to protect themselves with force of arms in modern society and would prefer more safety over more freedom, but until such time as over 3/4s of the population agree to cede their right to self defense to the government and change the 2nd with an overriding amendment, these tools are doing the job they are designed for. This argument that cars and knives and what have you serve another purpose so it’s “different” just strikes me as odd. Hell, the amount of people killed by cars when killing people is in fact the opposite of it’s purpose, is more concerning if you think about it because cars kill so many more people than the guns that are actually designed specifically for killing. But to do that we need to limit cars to traveling at 35mph and have internal and external airbags and giant soft air tube tires that can safely run over people without causing harm, but no one is advocating to make laws mandating such and no one would buy a car like that if it was available.