But....Trump benefited from both, and disagrees with you on both counts.
He also bragged about paying off (bribing) politicians.

Who are you and what have you done with Bob?

There are a few problems with that, and they all end up at the same issue, lobbying.
Police unions are incredibly powerful lobbyists and do lobby against the public's interests, and they use the threat of striking, leaving the public with zero law enforcement, to squash any attempt to regulate them.....and when that fails, the sheriffs and chiefs often just ignore the new laws, like they did about making discipline records public in CA, they just said "nope" and refused to release them, many departments held bonfires where they burned these records to ensure they would never, under any circumstances, become public knowledge....still today, even long after the law went into effect Jan. 1st and has been upheld in courts, the A.G. just outright refused again to follow state law and release these public records. Pretty damn hard to establish an effective oversight body when police have the ability to erase all information they wish by any means with no repercussions.

Second, the prison guard union is the best funded, most powerful private/union lobbying group in America, and they do actually write laws for representatives to present. It's clearly in their best interest to force the desperate to be criminals, it's their bread and butter. They fight to expand minimum sentencing, incarcerate 14 year olds as adults for life, continue and expand the failed drug war, oppose any rescinding of criminal laws, have tried to reinstate debtor's prisons, criminalized multiple civil crimes, etc....incarceration is their business, and business is good.

So while I agree, there are numerous better systems that serve everyone much better with less money , less incarceration, and less recidivism, until we revamp our political system to make it illegal to bribe politicians (and make no mistake, it's perfectly legal to bribe them with campaign donations or promises of massive support), there is no way in hell it's going to improve and a near certainty it will continue to get worse because there's money to be made by locking people up.

Not sure why these people were singled out. I guess the schools were pissed they weren't being bribed too.

Very few thanks to the NRA (the gun manufacturer's lobby) paying and blackmailing politicians into not enacting regulations on purchasing, carrying, or using them.

Yes, those politicians who let themselves be bought are a problem....but clearly so are the ones paying them off (bribing) like the NRA and Trump himself.

Step one, eradicating for profit prisons.

This single idea was the worst thing that ever happened to our legal system, imo. It created billion dollar companies who's product is incarceration. Like any for profit company, they minimize their costs by warehousing people in illegally crowded cells as cheaply as possible with little or no treatments or support during or afterwards and maximize their business by lobbying for ever more incarceration. The prison guard union is the best funded lobbying group in Washington, and created minimum sentencing so every convict becomes a customer.

Make prison a government function again, who's goal is turning out functional citizens, not warehousing as many bodies as they can get paid for, and we might turn a corner.....but that won't ever happen, there's no multi billion dollar prison reform lobbying group to bribe senators into doing the right thing.

Well, if you want to go that route, sure, still no equivalency between slick Willie who inappropriately got a blow job from a willing subordinate and tried to obfuscate out of it earning him an impeachment along with a few unverified and mostly unreported accusations of groping and a pedophile, or a blackmailing mistress abuser, or Dumb Donald who bragged on tv and radio about groping and leering at underage girls in pageants he ran and offering bribes and gifts to sleep with his friends wives while he was married....not to mention the multiple sex workers/models/porn stars he paid for sex (or to be quiet about how bad it was) and accusations of everything from groping to outright rape, and is being sued over it.
Or ran charities he used as a personal piggy bank to pay off legal debts and buy portraits of himself and fake magazines with him on the cover.
Or ran fraudulent schools and admitted it.....and has yet to pay a price for any of it besides the fines levied over his fraudulent schools.

Pretty sure the Clinton foundation has been thoroughly investigated, and I'm not hearing any charges pending....Trump can't say the same.

So no....no equivalency.

This is Russia. For a small bribe any knowledge is optional and certification can be bought.

That is an awful argument......and it kind of makes you an anarchist. Let me explain.
No law ever has completely stopped the crimes they outlaw. By your measure, no law should exist.
E.g. speed laws don't prevent speeding by all cars, theft laws don't prevent theft by all thieves, bribery laws don't prevent bribes by all real estate tycoons, drug laws actually increase drug related crimes, but firearm laws must prevent all misuse of all weapons, not even just all firearms, or forget it?!

Your requirements of gun control are completely...insanely... unrealistic.

Also...crazy cat lady is "using those cats to claw your face" just like shooting wildly into a neighborhood is "using a gun to shoot you". Her irresponsibility directly created a situation that endangered the neighborhood and caused damage, no? Damage caused by firing unguided fur missiles is always the shooters responsibility, not the missiles'.

Congratulations! Your video, Your bribe skill has increased, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 182 Badge!

Your video, Your bribe skill has increased, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Trump IS doing a great job....for other Trumps and our enemies, but not America.

Instead of (proudly)fake/(repeatedly convicted and admitted) fraud/fuming/cheating/thieving/lying/ racist/misogynist/ repeatedly bankrupting/whining/textbook narcissist/ idiot/ignorant/incestuous/infantile/ indignant/ school yard bully/sociopathic/ sexual assaulting/ philandering/ pedophilic/ slandering/ bribing/ porn star paying/ trust fund baby Trump?....in a heartbeat, and I thoroughly hate her.

This one was all about a ready made and proven solution, it's return-free filing.

We just need to spread the word about what people are missing out on, and try to convince congress that the good will this could generate among constituents is more valuable than the bribes the tax prep industry can offer.

Thoughts:

1) There has been a ban on sales of new, fully-automatic firearms ("machine guns") since 1986. That leaves some loopholes (can still buy them if they were manufactured before then, but that demand plus scarcity makes them expensive, etc.) but in general, there isn't a whole lot of uproar over that 20-year-old ban.

2) These bump-fire stocks don't technically convert a firearm into fully-automatic; the trigger is still being pulled 1 time for each bullet that comes out (semi-automatic).

3) However, they easily allow for rates of fire (bullets per minute/second) comparable to fully-automatic weapons. So, I think an unbiased and reasonable person would say that while a firearm equipped with one of these does not violate the letter of the ban on fully-automatic firearms, it does quite reasonably violate the spirit of that ban.

4) Doing anything to correct that discrepancy will require updated laws. Updating the law requires a legislature that generally supports the update and a president that agrees, or a legislature that overwhelmingly supports the update and can override a presidential veto.

5) None of that exists at the moment in the US. So, it is (perhaps coldly) logical to say that these bump-fire stocks will not be banned as an extension to the 1986 ban on full-auto firearms, at least not in the short term.

6) However, before quietly accepting that, it is worth noting that political fallout amongst those individuals in the legislature that refuse to consider updating the law is a very real possibility. Plenty of people, even on the right, even plenty of gun nuts, say that they are in favor of some degree of "common sense" gun control. Pointing out that bump-fire stocks essentially circumvent the already in-place ban on fully-automatic firearms seems like a good way to test that professed adherence to common sense.

7) Get that word out there, and pretty importantly, try to do it in a way that is as respectful towards the average "gun nut" as possible. Their minds can be swayed. Hunters, sportsmen, and even people that have guns for self defense can be persuaded with reason -- they can still do their thing even without bump-fire stocks, just like they can do their thing without fully-automatic firearms. Congresscritters probably can't be convinced, because they've already been bribed"persuaded" with campaign donations, NRA lobbyists, etc.


So, don't preach to the choir. Try to convince the people that do actually own guns. The good news? You've got "common sense" on your side.

HAhahaha! With 6 & 11 years on me and the household rule of "Boys NEVER NEVER NEVER bully girls" (note how this was not reciprocal) I would have more appreciated Brother-nemeses over my own experiences...

and I was the one easily bribed, thus I was the only one to get snitched on, keeping them smelling pretty. (Suprise! This dynamic never ended...never changed, but I don't bribed anymore).

Yeah, children are awful.

Luckily, they are also stupid and easily bribed