Comments

2
@1) Actually it a usage fee. Imposed on those who exercise the privilege of driving a vehicle on a publicly maintained roadway. We did not expect you to understand any of those crazy subtleties....
London is a major city that was simply FORCED to enact user fees to bring traffic congestion down. Otherwise traffic does not move. At all. Usage fees are the one and only effective way to discourage unnecessary driving and encourage alternate transportation methods.

Oh yeah, it also helps reduce carbon emissions, pollutants into the Sound, noise pollution, traffic collisions and casualties, and basically helps elevate the quality of life for humans that live here. We don't expect you to understand that, either.
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@2: Taxpayers already fund the publicly funded roadway, so your "privilege" snark is disingenuous.
4
Tolls on city streets! Awesome, another regressive tax!

Don't you dare institute an income tax though!

Now go lick the asses of the ultra wealthy some more. Maybe something will trickle down for you.
5
The YouTube shooter is a PETA terrorist.
What is unclear about that?
Its telling how the Leftist social media companies scrubbed her Leftist rant posts before the smoke had even cleared.
6
Evidently some folks really get pissed when their accounts are deleted or fucked with.
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Tolls are incredibly inefficient, most of the money goes to the tolling companies. The city is also looking to change the gas tax so you pay per mile instead too, so the middle class gets screwed twice as hard. You get what you vote for though.
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However, legal experts said Mueller's description of Trump as a subject of a grand jury probe does not mean he is in the clear.

Under Justice Department guidelines, a subject of an investigation is a person whose conduct falls within the scope of a grand jury's investigation. A target is a person for which there is substantial evidence linking him or her to a crime.


So, he's still being investigated, it just may turn out that they'll settle for the (very easily proven) charge of obstruction of justice, not directly criminal behavior. Or they're not showing their cards yet, because Trump and his legal team are very clearly easily manipulated, and above all, stupid.

@2: As a single data point, I just want to say that using public transit sucks. I went into downtown for an event at the Moore late last year, and was happy to take the bus since it was near Westlake. However, I became stranded when the show ran later than listed, and I missed the last bus by 15 minutes. It meant I had to call an Uber, which cost me $25 to get back home. Consequently, the next event I go to, I'll drive there. And now there's the possibility that I'd be tolled not just going over the 520 bridge, but also driving the streets? It's like Seattle is actively discouraging me away from coming downtown to spend money.

@5, 6: First, provide a citation for your claims. I enjoy hating on PETA as much as the next guy, but no one buys your bullshit, so you're going to have to provide something reputable, beyond your very worthless word. Second, making a veiled threat to come to the Stranger office and shoot the place up because they keep deleting your accounts is a way to get the police knocking on your door, not just your account deleted yet again. You imbecile.
10
@3) Wrong, in a really HUGE way. Driving is strictly a regulated privilege. It is not a right. You can't afford a car and insurance and a license? You DON'T DRIVE.
And so the public built the roadway, and so now NO FEES EVER BECAUSE! When has that ever been logical, or realistic for that matter. It seems it is your argument that blows like a fart in the wind.
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@9) You apparently have your life in order sufficiently to travel in and out of the city without a panic.
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[/Close Sarcasm Tag]
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@7 That being said, I'd still support something like rush hour tolls if implemented efficiently. Bring on the war on traffic.
14
8
Gun nut?
You're making stuff up again.
She used a 9mm handgun.
Totally vanilla. Regular clip.
What will The Left find to ban from this one?

9
Come on, you girls love being terrified so much you make up shit to be scared about.
It's like an addiction.
15
@10: I didn't say driving is a right. You're extrapolating that erroneously. My point was in regard to to the definition of publicly funded -- that the public inherently has the right to use said resources and therefore it is not a priviliege, regardless of whether there is sufficient tax revenue to adequately maintain and build the roadways and other infrastructure.
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Shorter @14: "She only used a regular gun to shoot several people and then kill herself - that's totes normal behavior."
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16
Sometimes people do bad things.
It can be scarey.
That isn't a reason to strip a hundred million law abiding Americans of their rights.
18
I don't know about "PETA Terrorist," but the shooter, Nasim Aghdam, was visible in several animal rights protests, and her vegan/animal rights actions were on the forefront of her online personality. She was quoted in a 2009 story about a PETA protest.

Her main subjects were exercise/fitness, animal rights, and "Persian" culture (historically, I guess). As far as I can tell, she never did any videos or said anything about guns, so anyone calling her a "gun nut" is likely just trying to use lies to desperately push a narrative.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04…

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04…
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“Tolling restrictions foreclose what might otherwise serve as a major source of revenue for infrastructure investment,” Trump’s plan reads. “Providing states flexibility to toll existing Interstates would generate additional revenues for states to invest in surface transportation infrastructure.”
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a81b…

I wonder how many people who support Durkan's toll roads are going to support Trump's toll roads
20
@17:

It is, if those 100 million law abiding Americans: 1. refuse to acknowledge there's a problem; 2. refuse to engage with others to constructively develop common-sense solutions to a problem they refuse to acknowledge, and; 3. actively strive to prevent others from implementing common-sense solutions to a problem they refuse to acknowledge exists. That's pretty much the text book definition of "irresponsibility".
21
@"rushmore"

9mm handguns are the most popular guns used by criminals in Chicago.

https://www.thetrace.org/2016/01/chicago…

Aren't you the guy that always says we should be more interested in stopping the violence in Chicago?
22
Seattle is choked with cars.
This is a new reality and new solutions need to be explored.
Congestion in the past was nothing like the gridlock conditions that obtain in many neighborhoods at times today and this situation promises to get worse.
I acknowledge that as a citizen of unincorporated King County my trips into town via private auto create a small additional burden and it does seem fair that some cost get passed on to me.
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The problem is people who want to kill other people.
Focus.

21
The operative word is 'criminals'.
25
Shifting state revenue streams from taxation to usage fees is one component of the move to the free-market paradise that supply-siders have been promising for the last half century. Usage fees assure that America's special breed of tough-minded individualists won't have to pay for services they don't use, like schools for other people's children or roads that go places they don't want to drive; and get rid of that troublesome idea that wealthy people should pay a larger share of their income than poor people -- or even an equal share of their income -- to finance the operations of the government. This has been sold to the lower income people who it is designed to shaft as "lower taxes" and has so far proven an easy sell. Your taxes go down as the cost of every resource or service you use on a daily basis goes up.

The other component of this societal shift is the all-out move towards privatization of public resources, which has accelerated to a breakneck pace under the current Federal administration. Combined, these two factors working together will deliver us to the world that the Cato Institute and every other billionaire-funded think-tank has been aggressively promoting for decades: Want to send your kid to school? Pay the corporation that owns the school. Want to drive on a road? Pay a toll to the owner of the road (don't worry, the money is automatically deducted from your account the moment you drive past the checkpoint.) Want health care? Pay the for-profit company that -- oh, whoops, that system is already in place.

Once people have accepted the pay-as-you-go usage fee model, what does it matter if they pay the fee to the government or some private entity? Don't let the fact that this free-market paradise sounds like a nightmare for anybody who is in the renter class and not the owner class disturb you; just trust that the owners know what's best.
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@23 yes, let's have effective gun control legislation based on sound proven policies.

It would then be awesome if we could, you know, actually remove the NRA imposed gag orders — The Dickey Amendment — on studying federal and local gun homicide data.

However, what that data would clearly show is the same thing it revealed in every other wealthy western democracy on earth: that a casual firearms regulatory environment politically crafted by for-profit gun lobbies, who desire to sell more firearms to more untrained people, equals higher gun homicide rates.

So those counties implemented "common sense" gun controls and reduced their gun homicide rates. And in fact these same measures reduced voice rates across the board.

We are alone among the wealthy western democracies in this delusional belief that more guns makes society safer and that more guns is the solution to crime. It's not.

Those are the Facts That Support My Point.
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"violence rates"
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@18; "Her main subjects were exercise/fitness, animal rights, and "Persian" culture (historically, I guess). "

Just a note - I have no idea why this woman referred to "Persian Culture", but I suspect it is nothing more than a convention. A lot of Iranian people call themselves "Persian" to distinguish themselves from other ethnic and cultural groups in Iran; there are Kurds, Gilakis, Mazandaranis, Lurs, and other Turkish groups there. It's sort of like British people saying they are Scottish, English or Welsh. She may have been making reference to some historicity, but the simple explanation is that she was Persian, not Kurd (or any of the other groups).
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@27
So much so she couldn't manage to kill anybody but herself. And did you see her military grade assault weapon? (Commonly referred to as a 9mm handgun.)


Oh for fuck sake. You really are this stupid, aren't you?

If she HAD used an AR-15 or other semi-auto rifle with a large magazine the fatality rate would've been higher. That's why the military uses them, dumbfuck.

Which is the reason sane people want stricter regulations on civilian ownership.
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$20

Yeah. Thing is common sense isn't what's driving you and your fellow travellers. Your (hypothetical) kid is safe at school. They're likelier to be hit by lightning there than by a bullet. I despair with everyone else at the agony parents who just deal with their kids being involved in a school shooting. I simply can't imagine that horrible an ecpwrience. Difference is I keep a sense of perspective and knowledge of reality. You don't.

You succumb to to irrational fear and, worse, teach kids to do so. Based on that irrational fear you do a few things, none of them in any way likely to reduce gun violence.

You want to limit new gun sales, which is fine under certain circumstances. But it does nothing about the hundreds of million of guns in private ownership now. Nor could you do anything about them constitutionally or practically. Have your fantasies about repealing the 2nd Amendment if you must, but do realize they're fantastical. It's simply never going to happen swhile the rest of our rights stay intact.

Most of the new regulations you do propose, you and your friends, would do almost nothing to even show in gun violence statistics. If we substituted the 4th or 1st amendments to the kind of regulation we do the 2nd you'd be (more) insensate with rage yelling about fascism and Nazis and all the other hyperbole you folks inevitably use whenever things don't go your way. So how about a compromise? Enforce those laws already on the books properly for a year or two and see how that goes. If there's still a problem, then maybe new legislation is the solution.

But the thing that cracks me up? You swagger and threaten that if I personally don't do some unspecified thing to stop unspecified gun owners behaving badly you're a'comin fer my gun. Which is pure bluster, either on a personal or governmental level. For one thing, I don't own one. For another you'd ignite a civil war against the folks that actually have weapons. Not particularly smart even if it were constitutional by any stretch of anyone's imagination. Honestly? The image that comes to mind whenever you say this is the last scene in Blazing Saddles. And you ain't one of the cowboys.
34
Lazy Stranger writers! You can do better. Linking almost all your "news" to the Seattle Times is like stealing revenue from them. Maybe try searching the internet for news related to the S-T stories?

Further, not only does the Seattle Times website reject https://www.AdBlockPlus.org enabled browsers, it also sets counter cookies that have to be cleared.
35
@25 I'm all for taxing the rich, but it's not going to help downtown congestion...
36
What's more progressive than taxing middle class working commuters while bending over for Big Business and Developers? People who cannot afford to live close to downtown and have to drive in are the working class peasants. The entitled bike crowd are the elites. Seattle is ignoring their own affordable housing rhetoric by promoting more punitive taxes on working class commuters. #FakeLiberals
37
@32:

My "hypothetical kid" has already been in lockdown situations at his high school in the past year, so I'm a little unclear as to your definition of "safe"; statistical odds don't mean squat when you're huddled under a desk or in a closet. And if it was "irrational" to be concerned about gun violence in schools districts wouldn't have much need to conduct such drills or actual lockdowns in the first place. What's irrational is shoving your head in the sand and denying the reality that kids are being killed in their own schools - doesn't matter if it's one or 20 or any number in-between - they ARE being killed and people like you don't want to address that fact, because then you'd have to take a long, hard look at how you might be complicit in fostering a cultural environment where picking up a firearm, walking into a school or an office, and laying waste with it is an option of first-resort for the people who do it.

You KNOW what the "common-sense" solutions are, they've been proposed over and over and over again, but YOU don't believe they'll work, so YOU aren't willing to even make the attempt. No one has ever suggested 100% effectiveness, but how many young lives must continue to be lost in order to satisfy whatever criteria of effectiveness you would support?
38
@"rushmore"

All murderers are criminals.
Focus.
The simple fact is that most firearm-related crimes, including murders, are committed with handguns.
Therefore, stricter regulations on handguns would be more effective in reducing gun violence and gun crimes then stricter regulations on weapons like the AR-15, which are used in very few crimes, including murder.
The fact is, you weren't worried about firearm-related crime at all. You just bring up violent crime in Chicago as a deflection, you aren't interested in stopping it, or even reducing it.

@Dr.Zaius
The military does not use the AR-15.
The military uses the M16, which is fully automatic.
This is why the "I needed to protect myself from the government" argument doesn't stand up.
The two weapons may look similar, but the civilian with the AR-15 will be killed by the soldier with the M16 just about every time.
39
@26

You are one angry person. But unlike Germansausage who literally is only a shout of senseless rage and entirely unworth engaging, you have a mind.

Comparing other countries to ours is unwise on many levels. At the legal level we have the 2nd Amendment as our courts have interpreted it, in Heller for example. Disagree with that decision? Ok. Try to bring a challenge through the courts. But until then it's the law of the land. I must accept Roe until it's modified or overturned. You must accept Heller. Sorry. About Roe anyway which even absent the underlying issue is appallingly bad legal analysis.

You seem confused about the NRA. They make no laws. Nor do they personally murder schoolchidren. They lobby for a particular idea more successfully than you like. Here's the thing about politics you seem to have forgotten. If there were enough political support for whatever gun legislation you want legislators would follow that, not the lobbyists. They kind of want to be re-elected. There isn't. And, skewed polling whose results you hapoen to like or not, politicians supporting the 2nd Amendment stay in office through most of this country. Those who don't- don't.

It may not have occured to you but the paradisical nations of the EU have their problems too. Our problems are best solved with reference to their cultural origins, not with answers that imperfectly work elsewhere.

Finally, outside echo chambers like this, you and your peers might try not treating differences of opinion as character defects. I make mistakes and want to hear what others think. It's why I read this thing. More information is rarely a bad thing. If I'm wrong I want to fix that. But when you and others like you are calling me names or shouting just because you dislike my politics hearing anything you have to say becones a challenge.

40
@38- Exactly. I could never understand this "standing up to the government" fantasy, because there's just no possible way armed civilians would ever not be out-gunned by the military. I think a few people saw "Red Dawn" too many times.
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"Many of the taxed American goods [and soy beans!] are manufactured [well, grown] in Republican-led states. China also says it’s willing to negotiate."

A brilliant move, on China's part. Go after Mein Trumpfy's base in America's heartland and see them sweat on Election Day.

"Will Trump waver?"

I dunno. Will the wind blow?
42
@37

I hid under my desk in grade school drilling for a hypothetical nuclear war. It's been 35 years but as I recall no nuclear exchange actually happened. And I think I might gave noticed. We had fire drills every so often too, but again no fire actually ever happened. The duty of preparedness is not the same as likelihood it'll be needed.

I dont actually know what specific legislative ideas you have in mind. But asking that the limiting ofconstitutional rights be accompanied by demonstrable and definable public good doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

In high school I was in Debate class, which was a lot of fun and probablybas educational as 3 iir 4 of my other courses combined. The argument people with nothing to say always used was "what if it was YOUR mother/brother etc. Legislators have a task I'd hate. They must rationally decide how much public cost or cost in personal liberty is justified by whatever effect a proposed law has in reducing some problem. And someone will always be the victim of the lines drawn, whether where they fall on tax rates or how much marijuana they can grow or in this. Like I said, not a job I'd want. But tgge job elected officials actuvely sought? You betcha.

I do apologize for the Blazing Saddles comment. Not every image that cones to mind is a good idea to write out.
43
@39 Oh. God. So many logical fallacies, so little time.

Yes. America is so unique. I guess we have some magic force field that makes our gun problems totally unique that every proven solution that has worked every where else in the world just can't work here because... reasons.

PS. I am a life long gun owner.
44
Wow. High School Debate! Yeah. That sounds about the level you "debate," alright.
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@38, 40:

"Just go home Iraqi insurgency, you can't fend off the might of the US military with just IEDs and old Soviet weaponry"

"Just surrender Afghan fighters, you can't possibly fight off the mighty Soviet Union without tanks and aircraft."

"Just surrender Viet Cong, you can't possibly stand up to the mighty US military with just old bolt-action rifles"

"Just surrender colonists, your few muskets and farmer militias can not stand up to the might of the British Empire."

I think that proves my point generally, but as a special aside to @38: Are you seriously arguing that a gun with automatic fire is always going to win out over a gun without it? Real life isn't a video game man. A well-aimed shot doesn't care what your attribute scores are, or how many "+1" modifiers your weapon has.

Full auto is for covering fire, not for hitting targets. You can't hit shit with full auto and you run out of ammo in about a second.
46
@6 Is that a threat? If the staff are serious about their health, they'd report this individual for online threats and have their real identity known. Anonymity is for people who don't make thinly veiled threats.
47
Aren't Seattle taxpayers already paying for a giant $930 million "Move Seattle" transportation levy? Durkan is proposing to tax people again for what they are already paying for while borrowing from a Republican concept, that of "user fees" to propose "congestion pricing".

On Second Avenue, the Dept. of Transportation reduced traffic through Belltown from three lanes to two, in order to create a buffered bicycle lane and the result is a mess for Transit. SDOT is perpetuating traffic nightmares with punitive policies that attack the working class commuters in favor of the 2% of bikers. It will only get worse.
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38
Those murders in Chicago are committed with guns that are already illegal.
In a city with some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation.
Believe it or not, someone who is willing to murder (which is against the law...) is usually not going to have qualms about breaking gun control laws.

There are hundreds of millions of firearms in the country,
the overwhelming majority are not used in crime.
Your problem is the criminals.
Disarming a hundred million law abiding Americans will not make you safer.
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40
You really imagine the US Army is going to be deployed to take the guns from a hundred million Americans?
Perhaps you are the one who has watched too many movies...
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@zaius

My mistake. Germansausage with an arrogance problem and a slightly better vocabulary is what it comes down to, not just a person who's a bit angry.

I had your attitude towards others when younger. Can't say it made my life or those of people I cared about better. The opposite really. But maybe you'll have better results.

Have a nice day.

51
@14: You're thinking of FOX viewers and Breitbart readers. That's not anyone here. Here we ask for proof when assertions are made. Still waiting on that, by the way. Not that you'll provide any, because you have no integrity (and you probably don't have any proof either).

@11: Yes, I do. But what about those that don't? I'm a white male over 6ft tall with a big frame, so I'm unlikely to be fucked with in downtown after midnight. Not everyone is, and using public transit potentially puts you in danger if one is not so blessed as I. If public transit fails you at a late hour, solutions are expensive.

My point was that Seattle is trying to discourage people from driving, but any local knows that our public transit system sucks outside business hours, so they're going to drive anyway, if they can. But if Seattle will be penalizing you for not taking the bus, what's the next step? Not going into Seattle in the first place, which businesses will just love.

But then all you did was make a derisive remark and not actually engage the point I was making. I don't know why you bothered to even reply.
52
Glaring omission on your morning news: the passing of Peggy Platt (!!) I trust there will be something on Slog later today.
53
"I make mistakes and want to hear what others think. It's why I read this thing. More information is rarely a bad thing. If I'm wrong I want to fix that."

And yet when challenged, you refuse to concede points that Dr.Zaius illustrating to be fallacious, you adopt a condescending tone, and run away from the comments section. I'm sure that's not indicative of anything, though.
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@31: Thoughtful of you to let us know that German Sausage is well endowed, but I'm puzzled as to what that has to do with any of the morning news items.
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54
He has to pay extra to get them to say it but he thinks it is money well spent.
58
@53

What challenge? Dismissing a schoolboy class 3 decades ago? Which point, never mind points?

The only thing said was that the USA has no magic shield from solutions adopted elsewhere? Since I never claimed it did he/she is arguing deceptively. But we do have different legal and social conditions that have to be accounted for, regardless of the good doctor.

That my comments were full of logical flaws? Ok. I make no claims to be a logician. So please note the logical flaws to which Zaius refers. Not him/her. You. I mean, they're so blindingly obvious Zaius saw no reason to even go beyond exasperatedly dismissing everything I wrote on that basis, so you must see them too? Please, educate me.

My guess? You've never asked anyone to defend logically or with cites a position you agree with. But I could be wrong.

Also, happy to engage people interested in ideas. I had a tenant once though who, on President Obama's election, said "country's done for with a nigger for president" to me. I didn't argue with that entrenched hatred and bigotry. It would have bveen pointless. Nor would I with that of Zaius.
59
@42:

And yet, lockdown drills happen in literally every public school in every district of this nation - because KIDS ARE ACTUALLY BEING KILLED. See the difference between your experience and theirs? That's why your argument that "there's nothing to be done" makes no sense, because ANYTHING we do would be better than doing NOTHING.

The "if guns were banned they'd just find another way to kill" argument is ludicrous on its face for the very obvious reason that those other means: hammer, axe, knife, sharp stick, rock, whatever, while certainly plausible, would be orders of magnitude less effective that the preferred choice, not to mention the fact that the likelihood of surviving such an attack are demonstrably higher than when firearms, and in particular high-capacity rapid-fire military-grade assault weapons are used. And as a counter-argument: if all of those alternative methods of killing someone already exist, well, no need for guns at all then, is there?
60
Yay another gun debate that will probably not change anyone's mind on either side!

Here's my two cents:

My issue with gun rights people who say it's the person not the weapon is that they frequently say we should have better mental health care, people trained to spot potential shooters, more staff to deal with shootings when they happen, etc. But if you propose raising some taxes to pay for all that stuff they say no. So it strikes me that they don't actually care about people dying from guns at all. Just don't care.

If they would simply come out and state: "We don't care if people are gunned down. Don't. Care." I'd actually have a little more respect for them. But as it stands, they're just two-faced liars.
61
@58: Hey, you stuck around in the comments section. Point to you. I guess you were just dismissing him, not the entire comments thread.

Most of the new regulations you do propose, you and your friends, would do almost nothing to even show in gun violence statistics.

Actually most of the regulations would probably come from first studying the problem, say by the CDC. The AMA already refer to gun violence as a public health crisis, but of course the Dickey amendment means it can't be studied. Ultimately it's pointless to speculate until that's repealed, though.

Your (hypothetical) kid is safe at school. They're likelier to be hit by lightning there than by a bullet.

It's certainly not "keep[ing] a sense of perspective and knowledge of reality" to compare gun violence against a natural weather event like lightning. Humans make the guns. Humans purchase the guns. Humans fire the guns. There's no natural occurrence there. But we take reasonable precautions to not be struck by lightning: lightning rods on the top of tall buildings, not going out when lighting is observed (or keeping low if one must), avoiding conductors. The fatality statistics are also not in favor of the comparison.

Those are the points I can engage without doing unreasonable amounts of Googling during work hours. I hope that's enough.
62
@47:

...in order to create a buffered bicycle lane and the result is a mess for Transit.

I’ve commuted on Second Avenue for most of the past dozen years. The main reason for traffic slowing in Belltown is the large number of construction projects on Second Avenue downtown, immediately downstream of Belltown. Most of those projects have been on the east edge of Second, obliterating the bike lane in each block during each project. Thus, it’s doubly inane to blame the bike lane for increased traffic.

But you don’t like SDOT spending money on bicycle transit, so you simply ignore block after block after block of new towers, and complain about a bike lane.

(That’s ok, though; so long as you continue to insist that people who commute via bicycle are richer than people who commute by car, no one will take you seriously anyway.)
63
@59

I think you're responding to someone else inadvertently.

Of course we need to do something. Of course there's a problem. 3 and 4 decades ago when I was going through grade to high school we had troubled kids. We had students who were poorly socialized. Kids could be incredibly cruel to each other then and can be now. For most of us adolescence isn't something we'd voluntarily re-live though it had indispitable good parts. But for reasons unclear to me we didn't have grade schools shot up by the alienated or agrieved. We didn't have high schools terrorized by AR-15 wielding troubled teens. We weren't better kids. Our parents and teachers weren't better people. Guns weren't more available, though possibly less common for all I know.

The question isn't do nothing or do something. It's 'what do we do that works?' What's a temporary measure to stabilize things. Longer term, what shift happened to make mass shootings far, far too common and how do we fix it consistently with the Constitution? Which by the way isn't the problem, necessarily. The 2nd Amendment existed for two and a half centuries before all these shootings happened.

Repeal the Dickey Amendment? Maybe. Is there a prohibition on Washington or Maryland or Oklahoma departments of education or human services studying firearms violence? I ask honestly. If not why wouldn't they have done the work already? But in theory I don't object to changing legislation that obstructs necessary government work within legal bounds.

I didn't claim Sandy Hook or all the other heartbreak8ng shootings would have happened on that scale were guns banned, Compte. Obviously a semi-automatic firearm with a high capacity clip will do more human damage potentially and certainly more targetted damage than a bomb or ramming the school with a car would. So what's the mechanism for distinguishing adolescent angst from deeply and homicidally disturbed? On what psychological symptoms do we shift from how you'd deal with either? Who do we task with monitoring kids for these symptoms? How about adults going through some stressor that could trigger homocidal rage in some people? When does depressed and/or angry become unable to retain 2nd Amendment rights in an adult? By what impartial process is the right suspended or that suspension rescinded? I ask because I truly don't know. More importantly I suspect neither do mental health professionals. Nor, I'm betting, law enforcement professionals.

In my career I deal with crisis fairly often, though thank God not like these. I bet many of the commentors here do as well. Anyone here deal with whatever crisis your work produces by randomly trying things out and seeing what works? I bet not or you wouldn't be entrusted with crisis management at all.

Why then when dealing with a fundamental Constitutional right and the lives of past and potential victims is that approach the preferred one?
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@61

The post above deals wirh a few of your points.

As for lightning versus gunshots you're right both as to agency and numbers. I suppose comparisons of malice driven actions would have been better. But my imagination isn't strong enough to think of anything more malicious than shooting a child.

Eeryone has biases and preconceptions drilled into us from childhood. Most are neutral. Somen are benign. Some are untrue. If my beliefs can't stand questions I'm uninterested in retaining them. Thanks for the questions.

And now I too have to earn my keep.
65
@62 So reducing capacity for traffic flow by going from 3 lanes down to 2 isn't causing more gridlock? Are you blind or just one of the 2% of bikers who benefit from this insane policy? This screws transit busses as much as anyone. Why do you hate transit? And Seattle's housing affordability crisis is national news, not a theory, so yes, the closer you live to downtown jobs, the richer you are. The entitled, male bike elitists (again 2%) who benefit from SDOT policies are enemies of the working class who cannot afford to live in Capitol Hill or Queen Anne like you selfish entitled brats. Basic economics discredit your smug delusions.
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@66:

And yet we regulate the HELL out of motor vehicles, don't we? Also, motor vehicles, like knives, axes, sticks, and rocks have other, primary and practical uses that have absolutely nothing to do with killing people, unlike firearms, which have only two practical uses: 1. shooting holes in things, and; 2. shooting holes in people.
68
So reducing capacity for traffic flow by going from 3 lanes down to 2 isn't causing more gridlock?

We weren’t talking about gridlock, but about traffic flow down Second Avenue. Second Avenue downtown has a number of large construction projects to disrupt traffic. Second Avenue in Belltown could again be four general-purpose through lanes (as it was when I lived on it in the 1990s) and traffic would still back up nicely if multiple blocks on Second Avenue downtown had construction work ongoing.

That you continue to ignore multiple large construction projects directly in the path of vehicles simply reminds readers how biased you are. Making up statistics about bike riders doesn’t alter that.
69
@66

Awesome.

So you're arguing for renewable licencing based on updated user's tests, and mandatory insurance for gun nuts, i mean, gun owners, and penalties for not maintaining those situations.

JUST LIKE CARS!

Finally, a cogent argument from your side.
71
@70,
What would be the point of all these militias? All your points merely add a bunch of meaningless bureaucracy on top of what we basically have right now in terms of gun ownership.

Further, some of your points either don't make sense or contradict each other:

The roster of members would not be made public.
Sure, but since only members can own firearms, then everyone you see with a gun is either: A) a LEO, B) a militia member, or C) a criminal. So what's the point of keeping it all secret? Besides, if it's secret, then how would someone know if a person with a gun who claims to be a member is lying or not?

Each [firearm] transaction would require an instant background check and three day waiting period
What for? Presumably, membership in a militia would require a background check, so that's already taken care of. And if these militias are so well trained and such, why the need for a waiting period?

Neither the militia or any government body would maintain a registry of firearms /// Federal firearms dealers would be required to maintain sales records for inspection by law enforcement officers with a valid warrant for a period of 10 years
Well, which is it? Are records of gun ownership kept or not?

Finally, your initial statement:
I would argue for a whole lot of changes. Probably not insurance though. Do you need insurance to exercise your constitutional rights?
is one of the principle reasons that many people believe gun proponents simply don't give a shit about mass shootings and gun crime. Yes, the 2nd amendment allows ownership of guns. Yes, we all understand that we can't legally do anything to restrict gun ownership or force gun control measures. We're asking the gun proponents though, what would YOU suggest then as reasonable measures? And the response is essentially: "Nothing, because 2nd amendment." You know, you could help out by voluntarily imposing some safety measures, but no... cannot limit 2nd amendment in any way. Ever.

So really, the gun proponents are simply behaving the way they've always behaved, they say they're in favor of "reasonable measures" but in truth, they don't care. Just don't care.

I personally would have more respect for gun proponents if they simply came out and stated that. "I know there's mass shooting and gun crimes but I don't care about it."
72
Tensor please support your screeds with actual statistics. Reducing roadway capacity by 33% to appease the privileged biking 2% is the definition of illogical and obviously causes gridlock. My figures come from SDOT, your lazy rants are unsupported and unhinged- how else could you argue that Queen Anne and Capitol Hill real estate is worth less than commuter communities farther out like Burien and Shoreline where bikes aren't a viable option for working families to get downtown? Check Redfin, you will easily see how backwards your logic is. Punishing cars punishes the working class. Promoting bikes for the 2% while convenient for you is selfish and a recipe for an elitist city of white snobs- like your entitled self. Be a better progressive.
74
@73,
Ok, yes, I suppose that's something at least.

As for conforming to constitutional language... to me that feels like a waste of everyone's time. I feel like we should all simply agree that "militia" was a term of that era and is outdated and obsolete now (for the U.S. at least). I know that people who are strict adherents to the constitution as written by the framers 200+ years ago feel it's written in stone and can't be altered, but I think they're wrong. Times change. Sometimes you need to clean out the fridge and the constitution needs some updating.

That said, I'm one of the very few liberals who is NOT in favor of banning guns... or "taking your rifles away." Gun bans are "feel good" measures. They don't get at the root of the real problem. They're a band-aid. I wish that gun opponents would say THAT just as much as I wish gun proponents would say they don't care.

Maybe age limits and hand-hand sales and safety training would help. Maybe. But I doubt it would be more than a drop in the bucket.

The U.S. is a nation full of people who've been brainwashed from birth to believe that if you only try hard enough, you'll be a superstar, and that you should be wary about everyone out there who isn't just like you. And it's also full of people who tried really hard and still didn't succeed and are surrounded by people who aren't like them. That's a bomb waiting to go off. Just throw easy access to guns on top and you have a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, I don't think gun bans would solve this country's problems. I also don't think age limits and safety courses would solve them. This country is rotted at its core. It's a diseased and decaying husk. It needs to be gutted completely.

Please wait...

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