The constitution is decided by the Supreme Court in the end. The American system of government makes the selection of justices political appointees for life. That is why you have Republican and Democrat justices. Political. So the constitution gets bent into any political shape according to power possession.

Don’t for a second believe that the United States can’t sleepwalk into a dictatorship. People are already describing Jan 6 as an ordinary tourist visit. What will it take for the public to see the danger with their own eyes.

You went into a ton of detail, thank you. But it is meaningless under the original definition of the act.

“The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.”

A bump stock modifies the frame of the gun which converts it into a fully automatic weapon. Don’t just get stuck on the trigger part of the action. The act covers everything, you just can’t cherry pick a single clause and ignore everything else. Otherwise they just might make you into one of Trump’s Supreme Court justices.

So much twaddle and dancing around definitions. You could definitely qualify for a spot on Trump’s Supreme Court.

All they are a modification to turn a semiautomatic gun into a full automatic weapon. That’s it. All the intricate dribble into the contrary doesn’t change that. Water is wet, sky blue, and modifications allowing automatic fire are machine guns.

What I find fascinating is the total number of numbskulls and cartoon villains, all collected under the Trump banner, and that lunatic mob may very well take government.

What’s the hell wrong with American voters?

That excellent quote of the text you provided spells out that any modifications to a gun that allows any more than a single shot is to be prohibited. A court that is very big on textual meaning, as it purports to be, would readily agree, unless bias is in the driver’s seat.

This conservative supreme court despised regulatory agencies . For decades the US government has relied upon such agencies as subject experts and has allowed them to regulate their areas. This court just wants to reverse this common sense and established way of doing things. I might remind you that the bump stock thing wasn’t a democrat initiative, but a bipartisan Trump one.

I disagree with the accuracy of what you just said, but 100% agree with your sentiments.

I actually looked up the legalisation one time. Congress described a machine gun and gave all the definitions that were forbidden to alter it to make it automatic fire. It was pretty comprehensive, particularly given that it was written in the 80s. However this supreme court said that the magic words ‘bump stock’ wasn’t in the legalisation. Words that didn’t even exist until 2003, or thereabouts. The court ignored the legislative text completely.

And I don’t believe that you are a gun nut at all. You seem perfectly reasonable and make a good point.

I’m not calling the insurrectionists good people, I’m calling the defenders of the constitution who might catch an AR 15 round good people.

I guess my point is not that they’ll necessarily be successful, it’s more that a great many good people won’t go home to their families that night.

They weren’t successful last time and the Republican Congress welcomed the traitor-in-chief back to DC last week as a hero.

The Republicans get away with so much despicable action and each time the Dems get pants by the audacity of the attempt. That’s how we are here now.

The conservatives will try absolutely anything, up to and including armed insurrection. Now with AR15s, and probably with bumpstocks fitted.

Don’t think that it could never happen. The MAGA element love being underestimated.

It’s exactly as it sounds. Like she is trying to strangle a rooster.

I have to inform you that that US has some of the best spy satellite networks on the planet.

People shocked that other countries play the spook game too is amazing.

The country that makes ALL your shit has nothing to fear in a trade war. Unless you want to forgo ALL your shit?

Who would have thought that sending all those jobs overseas to increase company profits and depress wages would have a downside?

Welcome to Marx 101.

“Property is theft”

Only in the US. The rest of the world buys them. It still is a major market lose, but China still makes Huawei phones.

*Land of the free!

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Oh Nos! Anyway…

I’ve been watching the big powers veto sensible UN measures for decades. The US does it, Russia and China does it, it’s a game to them. Waste of time finger-pointing, veto power is bullshit. It sez the rules don’t apply to anyone in the nuke club.

I can’t compare the US or German situation in any depth because I’m neither American nor German. Like you I can only go by appearances when viewing the other. I think that big pharma has got you guys around the balls to a larger extent. For instance, insulin medication has never been expensive over here and we have a thing called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) that lets Australians get necessary prescribed medicines without paying full price. The scheme began in 1948. Some medicines which costs thousands in the US are subsidised to the tune of about $10 a month here. That is the extreme end, but drug subsidy is a thing and is tax payer funded.

As to why other rich western countries don’t do as well, I’m not sure. I speculate that social policies probably have a great deal to do with it. The US seems to treat socialised anything with a degree of contempt, at least according to the horror stories we hear about. You know, patients without sufficient insurance being refused treatment or massive bill shock after an operation. I’m sufficiently ignorant about this matter to be confident about the detail.

All I can say is that something structural is at work that might explain why the Aussie medical experience is better, and I doubt that it’s better or different fast food.

I don’t understand the points of this post.

Australia is very urbanised with the vast majority of the country clinging to the coastal rim. The interior of the country is vastly unpopulated.

Australia has a much better health outcomes than the US. Our fast food culture, although not great, cannot be compared to Americans.

The ‘everything can kill you’ thing is a meme. Yes, we have tons of venomous creatures but as we mostly live in the cities the rare deaths cause headlines and are not common place. Plus we don’t experience mass shootings every week, let alone single gun deaths.

The single biggest benefit for Australian life expectancy is socialised medicine. It’s not perfect, and insurance is encouraged, but a poor person in need of major medical intervention has almost identical access to health care as a fully insured person, and mostly with no financial outlay. In fact, an insured person may lie side-by-side in a hospital bed next to an uninsured person getting the same treatment.

Medical insurance is not tied to employment.

All this is under threat. Conservatives are attacking our health system and underfunding it. It is only a matter of time before we start tracking downwards like the US. The secret to a longer life expectancy is government regulation and social responsibility, a healthy personal lifestyle and not feeding the corporate medical parasites that sit between the patient and the required healthcare.