That’s absolutely it, before the NRA gave up on promoting gun rights and imploded its political power never came from “buying politicians with industry money.” It came from a large pool of highly active voters with a shared primary issue. Their report card was more effective than any donation or individual campaign. Mobilizing large groups of voters is far more powerful than deep pockets. That’s also why nothing has changed since their collapse, pro-gun voters had been jumping ship to more effective groups for more than two election cycles now. “Defeating the NRA” didn’t result in a gun control win because by the end the NRA’s corruption did more to hurt gun rights than anything Bloomberg could buy; ripping that bandaid off entirely allowed the community to rebound even harder.

I assume everyone is owned by someone terrible, but the individual policies and changes are what drives me to swap.

I pay for things on sites processed by PayPal too, I just don’t have an account.

It’s never been about the money, that’s just an easy scapegoat for someone not wanting to admit that they lost on any given issue. It’s really easy to say “evil corporations bought the law/result they wanted” than admit that a highly engaged voting base was behind it.

Just standard credit card processing for purchases and zelle or venmo for transfers.

The gun and anti gun lobbies are chump change in politics. Combined they amount to less than $10m. I literally can’t even find their relative ranking on mobile because they aren’t even a drop in the bucket compared to others.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries

Good thing I deleted my PayPal years ago over a previous TOS change.

And this is where you went? This is literally Reddit’s bias taken to the level of hyperbole. The extremism groupthink here is the primary reason it hasn’t and likely will never go mainstream.

I feel like it would be pretty quickly determined that you are the “victim” in that scenario. I have actually carried explosives through a TSA checkpoint before though; it was the BEST LAYOVER EVER. They came to the lounge I was in asking for volunteers to train the dogs and then handed me a backpack with semtex in it and put me in line. The dog found me, I told him he was a GOOD BOY and got to throw his kong for him and rub his belly. 45/10, would layover again.

Depending on what airports they tried to go through they likely would have been caught. Even garbage security theater like the TSA catches concealed explosives fairly well.

OK, I genuinely have no clue what got that post removed. If you’re gonna have your own magic dictionary of what’s allowed then you’re gonna need to let people know what are and are not the special “no-no” words. It wasn’t even an edgy comment, it was just calling out the Russian bullshit, or was that the issue? Gotta protect the Russian shills or something?

Removed by mod

Most of the truly ridiculous knife laws are in states with equally ridiculous gun laws. A few have been challenged under 2A grounds with some degree of success but it just isn’t being pursued that much.

What does the article say? I’m on mobile and even with DNS Adblock all I get is a super loud Ford commercial that links me away from the article if I try to stop it.

The media are absolutely working together to push specific political viewpoints. This specific manifesto being blocked fits perfectly with the openly stated political goals of the majority of media in the US.

They are released very quickly if they fit the desired political narrative, just look at the buffalo shooter and how quickly every major news article dove into his manifesto as soon as they got their hands on it. If and when it can be used to promote a specific view it is released, if it doesn’t promote the correct view it sits for a while until they can figure out how to spin it or the hype dies down and if it hurts the desired view it is blocked like this one.

I would also suggest that you never speak or write any of these assholes’ real names. The notoriety is what they seek and every time a stranger mentions them by name they get their wish.

How is this different from any other shooting where there is a manifesto left behind? This is nothing new and it is very common that they are released very shortly after the shooting.

You can bring them back with no issue. It has never been an issue, just a regulatory prohibition on selling them.

They’re a joke to all the manufacturers that went all in on EVs before the market fell out from under them.

Prices for even 200k mile used vehicles are skyrocketing and cheap new cars simply don’t exist. Yes, ICE is the majority of vehicles out there, especially in rural areas, but they are more expensive and less available than ever. 10 years ago I bought a 100k mile Volvo wagon for $10k, put 50k more miles on it then sold it for $5k; if I wanted to buy the exact same car back today with 250k miles i would need to pay $15k for it. As manufacturers shift to EVs that problem is only going to get worse.

There is a logical reason to be against forced adoption before the technology matures. For a lot of the country they are not a viable replacement for ICE yet. They’re improving, but not as fast as ICEs are being phased out and that leaves a lot of places where a dwindling used market will be the only option for many people.