What a couple of fucking douche-bags. Hoping upon hope for a confrontation, and then so woefully disappointed when "the man" didn't play into their plans.

Had they been carrying holstered, semi-automatic pistols then SURE, all that bullshit about semi vs. full auto might have been justified, but no, you're carrying FUCKING SUBMACHINE GUNS. Let's just wander around with grenade launchers on our backs and then act offended when the man stops us.

Thanks for wasting our tax dollars you fucking idiots.

>> ^NetRunner:

@jimnms I think the right lesson to take from the example of Brazil is "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime."
Also, you're wrong about gun shows, there's a pretty big loophole. From wikipedia:

U.S. federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or those who are "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and perform background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI prior to transferring a firearm. Under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, however, individuals "not engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, or who only make "occasional" sales within their state of residence, are under no requirement to conduct background checks on purchasers or maintain records of sale (although even private sellers are forbidden under federal law from selling firearms to persons they have reason to believe are felons or otherwise prohibited from purchasing firearms).

In other words, you can always just say you're a private seller, and sell guns at gunshows without doing background checks or recording the sale.
There are videos, sifted right here on Videosift, of people going and buying guns at gunshows while literally saying to the seller "I don't need a background check, right? 'Cause I probably couldn't pass one" with the seller replying with some form of "no problem, here's your gun".
But more than anecdotal video evidence, there's also a been series of studies about drug cartels moving serious amounts of guns using straw purchases at gun shows.
Yet for some reason you're calling Moyers a liar for saying the same thing.
Also, the Assault Weapons Ban set the maximum legal size of a single clip at 10 rounds. IIRC, this latest shooting featured the shooter using a barrel mag with over 100. That used to be illegal. Also, the Tuscon shooting featured a shooter using 2 guns with 30-round clips -- and he was stopped when he had to reload.
Personally, I don't quite understand the anti-gun control side of the argument. Say banning assault weapons only reduces the number of people killed by gun violence by 1.6%. That's still what, a few thousand people's lives a year? Why is having assault weapons legal for civilians worth the deaths of a thousand people a year? Why would it be worth the death of even one person a year? You can still have a pistol, a hunting rife, a shotgun, etc., you just can't have a high-velocity, large-magazine firearm. What exactly is the harm in making that illegal?


That's not a loophole in gun shows, private sales and transfer of firearms are not regulated in some states. You can't set up a booth and sell guns at a gun show unless you are a licensed gun dealer. And you certainly aren't going to walk in and buy a fully automatic assault rifle without showing ID or getting a background check. If a person legally has a fully automatic weapon, they have to have a class 3 federal firearms license and register the weapon with the ATF. If they sell that weapon, the person they are selling it to must also have a class 3 firearms license and the transfer of the weapon must be reported to the ATF.

I've seen the videos you speak of and I read the report you linked. It's good that the ATF is doing their job and cracking down on those douchbags dealers. What you said about Brazil, "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime.", can be said about the U.S. also.

The assault weapon ban limited pistols magazines to 10 rounds and rifles to 30 rounds. This also only applied to weapons and magazines manufactured or imported before the 1994 law went into effect. He still could purchase the high capacity magazine if it was manufactured or imported before the law went into effect, or he could have purchased it illegally.

People are still confused about what an assault rifle is. The definition of an assault rifle is a gun that can fire full auto or in bursts, and generally uses a shorter, less powerful cartridge than a battle rifle. The guns the media so ignorantly call assault rifles are NOT assault rifles. They look like their military assault rifle counterpart, fire the same round, but the internals are different. They only fire in semi-automatic and can not be modified to fire full auto.

If "assault weapons" were the least used weapons in violent crimes, why go after them when according to the DOJ the effect on crime is "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The guns most preferred by criminals are small caliber (.25, .38 an 9mm) easily concealed pistols with magazines of 7 or less. So what do they do? They ban "assault rifles" and big magazines. Does that make any sense? It's just politics to appease the mass stupids by banning big scary looking guns.

Lets apply the same logic used by legalize drug crowd (which I'm all for). Pot and other drugs are illegal. There are laws against the sale and possession of these drugs, yet people still get them. Ban all guns, and people will still get them, only it will just criminals with guns. Both England and Australia have banned private ownership of guns, and their crime rates went up because the only people left with guns were criminals [1][2][3][4]. Why don't we give that a try here, because it worked so well for them.

Wow, I have just lost respect for Bill Moyers. He has stooped to flat out lying and playing a fear mongering video that is full of BS. Right at 1 minute he says "one of the guns used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994." This is a flat out lie. The so called "assault weapon ban" did not actually ban any weapons, it only banned cosmetic features on semi automatic replicas, or more accurately it limited a gun to having no more than two military style features found on the real assault weapon. His "AK-47 type assault weapon" would have still been legal, it just might have looked less scary.

The 1994 Assault Weapon Ban was political stunt that banned something that people feared, but didn't do squat to prevent crime. The DOJ conducted a study on the effect of the 1994 Assault Weapon ban and found that its effects on gun violence was "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The Brady Center did a study of the ban and their findings were that "assault weapons" were only used in 1.6% of gun crimes.

I can't believe he played that clip of a scary muslim instructing on how easy it is to go to a gun show and walk out with a fully automatic weapon without a background check or showing any ID, without checking the facts claimed. That is total fear mongering BS. First of all you can't buy a gun at all, even at a gun show without a background check. Second, to legally own a fully automatic weapon requires a class 3 firearms license, which isn't easy to get or cheap, and you must register your weapons with the ATF. Way to go on fact checking that video Bill.

How come you never hear about the crimes that are prevented by people lawfully carrying a gun? A NIJ and another independent study from 1993 and 1994 found that 800,000 to 2.5 million crimes per year are prevented each year most of which the victim never had to fire a shot.

Well, I'm certainly not lying. And it was 35% on my adjusted income, or what they call taxable income, I think. And it was in no way over or even in the same ballpark as $373k. Not even close.

I don't own. I rent. It is LA, after all. Buying a home in the city is tough. But I shouldn't be penalized for that, should I? We didn't get married last year, but we're certainly doing it this year. That may help next year, but why punish people who are single? Does that seem fair to you? And why punish those who don't want to work in the public sector or for a corporation? You know, I did employ two freelancers, so I create jobs this year. Shouldn't I be rewarded for that? It just makes zero sense to me.

I don't know why my tax is so high, to be honest. I have a CPA that deals with all of that. I just give him my itemized deductions and the amount I made, and he does the rest.

Yes, Ireland, Greece, Spain and the UK are exactly the same as the US. Bravo. Their EU is part of their problem, but that's an entirely different conversation, isn't it? I like how you bipartisan types take someone's real problems and make a political statement out of them. You know, taxation of this magnitude is not a partisan issue. This affects real people with real lives. Right now in my life, the only thing that stands in the way of me building a better life and the ability for me to pursue my happiness is the government. I owe them every year, and every year it goes up, and every year the Democrats call me a liar. I don't understand that.

Meanwhile, my CPA tells me of some of his clients. The firemen and policemen in LA. One fireman, a captain for a firehouse, makes $12,000 a month, and he'll retire when he's 55, and he'll take home 90% of that for the rest of his life. Good for him. A police captain makes enough to buy a home in Malibu overlooking the water. According to my CPA, he's got one helluva beautiful manicured backyard, too. Good for him. Glad I can pay for it. And you wonder why some of us hate public unions. Because I have to pay for them to retire at the age of 55 and take home a pension for the rest of their lives, yet the small businessmen can't catch a break because we're just middle class. I hear it's a helluva lot easier to just get on welfare and ride that out for a while.

So, you can comeback all you want with "Spain! UK! Greece!" but it means little to people like me, because I don't give a damn about your partisan bullshit, and it's not worth my effort to sit here and point out the many flaws in that argument. I care about how this affects me. The wars, the world affairs, the humanitarian efforts, and whatever else to me is just a distraction. What's important is I shouldn't be raked over the coals, and then have a gaggle of confused statists scratching their heads and point fingers at me as if there was some taxation glitch in the system.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
All I can say is I'll have to take your word for it. Maybe you could send me your tax return, and I could figure out what the deal was!

But something's definitely fishy about that, because the top marginal income tax rate is 35%, which means you only get taxed at 35% on income above $373,651, and that's adjusted income, as in after you do all your deductions.

I'd have to whip out a calculator to check what overall % of my income it was when I was all said and done, but mine was more like 12%. Then again I'm pretty much doing most of the normal middle-class stuff that's subsidized (i.e. married, own a home, work for a corporation that provides health insurance, etc.). Only thing missing is the 2.5 kids, and a cache of semi-automatic weapons.

Anyways, here's Turbo Tax's summary of the tax changes for 2010, you tell me what it was that bit you.

As for cutting spending when times are tough, how's that working for Ireland? Greece? Spain? UK? Is it working for them, or are they in even worse shape than they were before they started? How are countries like Sweeden and Canada that did big stimulus (relative to their GDP anyways), currency devaluation and strict bank regulation doing?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
No, my federal income tax went up to 35%. I made significantly less this year, as well. The difference between people like you and people like me, is that I'm freelance and considered to be a small business while you're an employee working for a corporation. My taxes went up. Yours probably went down.

That's the government incentivizing you to work for a corporation or the government.

Taxes aren't the only incentive for working for government and corporations. They have lower taxes to pay, so they can generally pay more and offer great benefits, as well. Freelancers like me cannot afford health or dental insurance. I could if they weren't stealing 35% of my income. Luckily for me, my fiancée works for a corporation so I'm a dependent on her policy.

Also, because I made less this year (thanks to the economy), I have to look at cutting my spending. Logical, right? So I have done so. But my 2010 expenses for doing business haven't gone down, and the cost of living has skyrocketed (especially here in LA). Agriculture is up. Gas is up. My utilities went up. And brilliantly my state and federal taxes have gone up. But really it's the federal income tax that's abhorrent.

Why is it the government can't cut its spending when times are tough? Why do they have to squeeze us during rough times? Why can't they see we're hurting and help us by taking a little less? Maybe if we didn't have to pay for all this defense spending? Maybe if Obama didn't go into Libya? Maybe we can get rid of some of these government departments? I mean, something? Anything?

There's never an answer for this except "pay your fair share". I wish I was paying my fair share, but 35% on top of a financial loss this year isn't fair. And didn't they report that we, the people, paid more in taxes this year than the corporations? Shocker.

So, NR, my taxes did in fact go up. They went way the hell up with everything else... except my income. Where's my reprieve? Where's Obama when the small businesses need him?

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
On taxes, which taxes went up? Income tax rates below $250K (and above!) are the same as they've been, and payroll taxes just got cut a bit. My federal taxes definitely went down, while my state & local have increased slightly, but Obama has nothing to do with those. The only tax increases I know of are on cigarettes, and maybe the expiration of tax cuts that began with the stimulus.

All I can say is I'll have to take your word for it. Maybe you could send me your tax return, and I could figure out what the deal was!

But something's definitely fishy about that, because the top marginal income tax rate is 35%, which means you only get taxed at 35% on income above $373,651, and that's adjusted income, as in after you do all your deductions.

I'd have to whip out a calculator to check what overall % of my income it was when I was all said and done, but mine was more like 12%. Then again I'm pretty much doing most of the normal middle-class stuff that's subsidized (i.e. married, own a home, work for a corporation that provides health insurance, etc.). Only thing missing is the 2.5 kids, and a cache of semi-automatic weapons.

Anyways, here's Turbo Tax's summary of the tax changes for 2010, you tell me what it was that bit you.

As for cutting spending when times are tough, how's that working for Ireland? Greece? Spain? UK? Is it working for them, or are they in even worse shape than they were before they started? How are countries like Sweeden and Canada that did big stimulus (relative to their GDP anyways), currency devaluation and strict bank regulation doing?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
No, my federal income tax went up to 35%. I made significantly less this year, as well. The difference between people like you and people like me, is that I'm freelance and considered to be a small business while you're an employee working for a corporation. My taxes went up. Yours probably went down.

That's the government incentivizing you to work for a corporation or the government.

Taxes aren't the only incentive for working for government and corporations. They have lower taxes to pay, so they can generally pay more and offer great benefits, as well. Freelancers like me cannot afford health or dental insurance. I could if they weren't stealing 35% of my income. Luckily for me, my fiancée works for a corporation so I'm a dependent on her policy.

Also, because I made less this year (thanks to the economy), I have to look at cutting my spending. Logical, right? So I have done so. But my 2010 expenses for doing business haven't gone down, and the cost of living has skyrocketed (especially here in LA). Agriculture is up. Gas is up. My utilities went up. And brilliantly my state and federal taxes have gone up. But really it's the federal income tax that's abhorrent.

Why is it the government can't cut its spending when times are tough? Why do they have to squeeze us during rough times? Why can't they see we're hurting and help us by taking a little less? Maybe if we didn't have to pay for all this defense spending? Maybe if Obama didn't go into Libya? Maybe we can get rid of some of these government departments? I mean, something? Anything?

There's never an answer for this except "pay your fair share". I wish I was paying my fair share, but 35% on top of a financial loss this year isn't fair. And didn't they report that we, the people, paid more in taxes this year than the corporations? Shocker.

So, NR, my taxes did in fact go up. They went way the hell up with everything else... except my income. Where's my reprieve? Where's Obama when the small businesses need him?

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
On taxes, which taxes went up? Income tax rates below $250K (and above!) are the same as they've been, and payroll taxes just got cut a bit. My federal taxes definitely went down, while my state & local have increased slightly, but Obama has nothing to do with those. The only tax increases I know of are on cigarettes, and maybe the expiration of tax cuts that began with the stimulus.

i cant have hand guns in my coutry, but i got my semi-automatic-boomstick with 10 buck shots, perfectly legal as long as i dont hunt animals with it, lol.

@blankfist well, that's what makes it opinion and not fact.

As for "fear-based politicking", are you saying all statements that evoke fear are bad in some way? For example, I know this guy who likes to post videos about how the Fed is going to destroy America with hyperinflation. Is he doing something wrong?

Setting that aside for a moment, I didn't come away feeling afraid about anything listening to this clip. Instead, I came away feeling sorrow about the thought that maybe something could have been done to at least lessen the scale of the damage that Loughtner did. I didn't hear a recounting of some dire and immediate threat to me in what he said, I heard a pretty scathing admonition that my own indifference on the topic might have contributed to the death of a nine year old girl. That stung a bit.

I haven't really felt like I cared about gun control as an issue since I was a teen. Even then, it was more about being contrarian with my right-wing friends at school than really giving a shit about it.

It's a topic I think is worth having a debate about again. I'm not thinking anything radical here, maybe just simply limiting the size of clips on semi-automatic weapons again.

Since you're something of an absolutist about these kinds of things, I'm happy to hash it out in terms of me simply supporting bans on private ownership of rocket launchers and nuclear weapons.

I just had an interesting conversation with my Oklahoman, ex-military, gun-loving 87-year-old father. Conservative to the core. Big NRA supporter.

I asked him how he felt about possibly making semi-automatic Glocks with 30 bullet magazines illegal. That the only purpose for them was to kill and kill quickly.

He got mad. Big surprise. "There are no handguns that have 30 bullet magazines. You read that in the New York Times, didn't you?"

When I found on Glock's website that the magazine actually held 33 bullets, he got real quiet. And he agreed that banning such a gun made sense.

There is hope, my friend, there is hope. And it is facts that will lead the way.

That is becoming my mantra. I love facts.

Hope you and your extended family and friends are safe down there, with all the water worries.

In reply to this comment by kymbos:
While America's gun laws remain, so shall the massacres continue.

I think they all should have been doing it with a Semi Automatic this way it could have been fair!

Seriously, how fucking stupid can comedy get?

If this went to court... is he required to put his hand on a fucking bible too? LOL

Everyone has the right to bear arms. He should equip both shoulder sockets with attached semi-automatic assault rifles... then ask them if they still need a thumbprint to cash a check. I'm not serious of course.

The guy has a heck of a case on his 'hands' if he decides to pursue this case.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
$450 for a "decent" AK? Are you kidding me? 1)It's all stamped metal. There's no such thing as a decent one. It either works or it doesn't. Also, that's WAY too much money for a shit gun. And yes, it would be a semi-automatic. They're all to easy to find - pretty much anywhere.


I admit up front that I don't know guns, but I do know the AK's reputation as the most durable and reliable assault rifle in existence. How exactly is it a shit gun?

If you need to defend yourself with an AK-47, because God wont do it, you must have a pretty flimsy impression of what God can and cant do. He's down in Missouri, which is #8 for the most obese state. Can people who weigh 800 lbs properly fire an AK-47?

For EDD, the AK-47 can be semi-automatic or full automatic. I believe its only one item in the gun that seperates the two distict firing modes. An automactic rifle is outlaw'ed in the USA except those grand-fathered in, or under special permit(s).

But this guy is an idiot. So those Mexican drug trafficers can go to him, buy a truck to help transport their meth from Mexico to his backyard of Missouri, and get a free gun to kill Mexican police (since they pose as legit buyers at gun shows all the time for the past decade). And he complains about the grow of drugs in his area. Wonder how long it will take this guy to put 2 & 2 together.

Finally, the US is not a Christian nation. Last I checked, we have something called the 1st Amendement. The Revolutionary War was fought (among other things), to have religious freedom from the King of England. We just didnt like the King's version of Christianity at the time.

$450 for a "decent" AK? Are you kidding me? 1)It's all stamped metal. There's no such thing as a decent one. It either works or it doesn't. Also, that's WAY too much money for a shit gun. And yes, it would be a semi-automatic. They're all to easy to find - pretty much anywhere.

It's way cheaper for him to give away an AK as opposed to an American M16. And they would most likely be semi-automatic as it is very VERY hard to get a permit for full-auto as I understand it.

Upvote for the guy keeping his cool.