Do Americans really believe they’ll be able to get their pet monster under control once they genocide the entire Middle East?

I don’t think any Americans who truly support this think further than the next quarter of Raytheon profits.

Korra and Toph from Avatar, Tsunade and Sakura from Naruto

someone trained in protecting

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a cop protecting anything other than a storefront

A team of a nurse or social worker + cop is the alternative to (generally) 2 cops. Whatever the funding mechanism behind the doors, you’re switching out a cop for an alternative person, which is exactly what the defund movement has always been asking for. See some quotes below:

https://defundthepolice.org/alternatives-to-police-services/

The police service is a dangerous option for people experiencing a mental health crisis—but for many, it’s the only option. By defunding the police, significant resources can be reallocated to create a new community emergency services to support the mental health needs of our vulnerable community members. Teams trained in de-escalation and who root their work in community-informed practices could provide crisis support and care.

…

One common refrain in opposition to defunding the police assumes that our society will not be able to effectively respond to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence. In most incidents of violent crime, police are responding to a crime that has already taken place. When this happens, what we need from police is a service that will investigate the crime, and perhaps prevent such crimes from occurring in future.

Policing is ill-equipped to suit these needs. When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed, and at times refused to take the threat seriously. Why would we rely on an institution that has consistently proven that it is rife with systemic anti-Blackness and other forms of discrimination that result in certain communities being deemed unworthy of support? Instead of relying on police, we could rely on investigators from other sectors to carry out investigations. Social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, researchers, and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place.

…

If we were to defund the police, we could create new investigative services where diverse teams of researchers and investigators, with a mix of scientific, public health and sociological expertise are able to attend to our investigative needs without the inherent anti-Blackness with which the police services approach our unsolved cases. Additionally, we could put money into programs attending to the food security and housing security needs of people living in precarity, to reduce the likelihood that desperate people unable to have their basic needs met would resort to the extraordinary step of attempting to meet their needs through theft.

You’re not wrong, but so are Republicans. That’s the nature of a 2-party system and why it basically doesn’t work.

Yoo a lot of nostalgia for the Cybiko! My mom wouldn’t let me get a gameboy but my sister managed to find one of these somewhere. That was my only way to do handheld gaming for years! The games sucked but it was better than homework =)

Biden didn’t stutter when he was Obama’s VP and his brain was still intact. Seems like everyone but you cares.

(almost) no black people care about Kamala.

https://tacticaltransition.com/product/ar-15-finishing-kit-rainbow-pvd-coated/

It likely won’t be done at scale, but let’s say you are wildly successful and are now in line for a high-value position, where vetting is common. Might look pretty bad if you fabricated your whole thesis. Recently, Bill Ackman basically bullied several schools into firing their head administrators on the pretense of not citing sources correctly in their thesis papers.

I’m not the one downvoting you, but I think this is where you might lose me - I agree that people will buy housing and rent it out if they can make a profit, and we’ve had landlords doing that basically forever. But if the government gets involved and owners sell, I don’t see how home ownership can be more unaffordable. Basically we have a hugely constrained supply of housing. If, say, there were 50 skyscrapers full of apartments that went up overnight in San Francisco that charged $1000/month, rents would have to go down everywhere else because there would be the introduction of so much supply that nobody would pay more than that cost (because that’s the alternative to where they’re living now). Obviously that’s a fantasy scenario, but the various governments (city, state, and fed) all are not doing anything to move towards that goal, which would create supply equal to demand. If current landlords sell, then that would drive prices further down, not up - you’re literally increasing the supply again, and also because they will be competing against each other to sell, it should drive down prices for those homes as well.

Yeah, even 3d printed frames are even “good enough” for occasional use, especially if you buy all the other internals elsewhere, especially the slide/barrel, which are not covered at all by this tax (or by any other law in CA that I’m aware of, other than threaded barrels for pistols).

So one of the most common handguns is the Glock 19, which can be found pretty easily for between $500 and $600 in any gun store. I have strong doubts that an extra $55-66 per gun is going to fundamentally reduce the amount of guns in circulation. The person who buys a single gun isn’t going to not buy the gun, and hobbyists who have a lot of disposable income won’t stop buying new stuff, but will grumble a lot.

Anyone with nefarious intentions (cartels, etc.) would just buy in Nevada, Arizona, or other states anyways, where there aren’t as many restrictions on firearms. If you ever see crime photos of people with glocks, it’s pretty common to see 30-round magazines, which have been unable to be purchased in CA for years, showing that these guns and magazines are all coming from out of state to begin with.

Yeah, sorry, at this point, I don’t know what you’re trying to say. I think we’re both in agreement that this cop is an idiot and should not have his gun out, right?

I’ve only been trying to tell you that your question of “why he didn’t demount the flashlight” is not really how it works.

Why would you = removing a WML. This guy is clearly a super huge idiot if that’s what he was trying to do. I would think that this is super far from SOP, which should be to use his flashlight since he’s surrounded by 999 other cops, this guy did not need his gun out at all.

Yeah, 12lbs is crazy.

Yeah no problem - not to get too deep in the weeds, but the glock trigger is intended to fire a round whenever you have your finger on the trigger and pull it. In other words, if you pull the trigger, it will go bang. The trigger dongle is not meant to function as a safety device if you are pulling the trigger partially.

In general, the only safety feature of triggers is a long and hard pull weight, commonly seen on “double action / single action” (DA/SA) guns like the Sig P226. The double action refers to 1) cocking the hammer, then 2) releasing the hammer. Glocks are all striker fired, which means they only have a single action (releasing the firing pin, no hammer). That means that each trigger pull on a Glock is the same, in contrast to DA/SA guns where the first pull is extremely hard, then each pull after that (because the hammer is then cocked) is very light. This is considered a safety feature because you have to be very intentional about your first shot, but once you know you’re going to be shooting, other shots are easy.

What’s weird, as the other commenter mentioned, is that NYPD makes glock install a super heavy trigger in their glocks so they all basically function as a safety. However, the dongle doesn’t impact that at all - it’s just a tiny little flap that instantly folds with no pressure.

The firing pin block is indeed a safety device too, but it’s unconnected to the trigger dongle per se (there’s no mechanical connection). A firing pin block does block the firing pin from moving forward. On a glock (and similar striker fired guns with trigger dongles), the movement of the trigger (let’s say 50% through the pull) pushes the firing pin block up so that the firing pin is free to impact the bullet (once the trigger is pulled 100%). The trigger dongle’s job is to prevent the trigger from STARTING to move at all, thus keeping the firing pin block in place - the difference in weight between the dongle and the trigger is what makes them drop safe (in contrast, see early sig p320 designs, which were not drop safe because there was no dongle).

Edit: btw, that’s why good trigger discipline (example) is extremely important for glocks, since you have no external safety (and outside the NYPD, a relatively light trigger weight).

Although it’s not that hard to unmount a weapon mounted light (WML), you typically do not - it’s just how your gun is configured. Sort of like if you put new laces on shoes, you can technically take them off, but why would you? WMLs are used to help identify targets in dark areas - especially when the possibility of actually shooting is very high - i.e. if you know someone with a gun is hiding in a basement, you’d want your WML on to positively identify them so you’re not shooting at innocent people. HOWEVER, based on everything we’ve heard about these protests, there’s really no reason that the officer should have had his duty weapon out AT ALL. They have regular flashlights for use in regular scenarios (like here) where you need to see in the dark but are not going to be shooting anyone.

OK, 2 paragraphs of background: Currently (and for the past decade) people in Gaza have had no control over their land or future - they are entirely at the mercy of the Israelis. You might see references to this as the “right to self determination.” Palestinians in Gaza cannot leave, cannot trade with other countries, etc. Israel controls all land crossings and has a naval blocade on the sea, inspects all goods coming into Gaza, including limiting what goods Gazan people are allowed to possess. Attempts to give Gazans goods have been met with extreme hostility - see, for example, the freedom flotilla in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid

If a country controls every aspect of your territory, that is by almost by definition an occupation. This article talks in depth about the definition of an occupation: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/gaza-israel-occupied-international-law/ (note atlantic council is a right-leaning source, https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/atlantic-council/). Here’s a second source from the UN, back in 2022 before the current events. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129942

So to answer your second question, “liberated” does imply the removal of an occupier. Under almost every definition, Israel is occupying Gaza and the West Bank.

To answer your first question, is it advocating for the dissolution of Israel? In general, no (yes, some people want that, don’t “not all x” me). But if the real question is where do we go from here, how do we “stop the murders”?

If Israel relinquished control over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, that would be what people generally call the Two-State solution. This is NOT the dissolution of the state of Israel at all, and in fact enshrines the state of Israel, but at a scale that give it by definition less than the entirety of Israel+Gaza+West Bank. While this has been the “liberal” position in the US, the US keeps voting against a real Palestinian state (https://apnews.com/article/un-vote-palestinian-membership-us-veto-8d8ad60d8576b5ab9e70d2f8bf7e2881). In other words, what we say we want does not match up with our actions. And Netanyahu has reiterated that this will never happen under his watch. https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-01-18-2024-73d552c6e73e0dc3783a0a11b2b5f67d

So if a 2-state solution is off the table by both the US and Israel, where does that leave us? Without a two-state (or one-state solution, with enshrined rights for Palestinians), the murders of Palenstinians will continue unabated. For example, in the West Bank (the other occupied territory), more than 200 Palestinains were murdered in 2023. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/palestinians-west-bank-2023-was-deadliest-year-record https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-12-16-23/h_b60eefa90fd1779f9b2b8cbf8d823c41

Apart from this, Israel would basically have to either push all the non-Jewish populations out of Israel (known as ethnic cleansing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing) or kill them all.

Technically any unintended discharge of a gun is a negligent discharge because the user isn’t following the 4 rules of gun safety. The trigger dongle makes a glock drop safe, but not safe from idiots putting their finger on the trigger (where most NDs happen).