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PostMar 26, 2021#51

urban_dilettante wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
chriss752 wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
 So, I'm not concerned about people coming to Missouri to buy a gun because I feel 99.9% confident that they're not going to turn around and use that purchase to murder me, you or anyone else. A huge majority of gun owners mean no harm to people, it's the small percentage within the gun ownership group that means harm and moves other people to classify all gun owners as "a type of terrorist".
Chris, you're just empirically, verifiably wrong. I'm sorry. Please have a read: https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/repeal-of-missouris-background-law-associated-with-increase-in-states-murders.html. A similar study found that regulations enacted in Connecticut reduced gun crimes by up to 40%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504296/. If the NRA would stop litigating to prevent the CDC from researching the US gun death epidemic (gee, I wonder why the gun lobby and gun manufacturers don't want guns revealed as the cancer that they are) I guarantee you there would be a hundred more studies reinforcing these results. Nothing about background checks or strong regulation prevents "law abiding citizens" from buying guns. But there is a very clear correlation between # guns per household and # gun deaths by state:


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/gun-owners-study-one-in-three/

This is from 2103. I've seen a more recent one that puts MO right up at the top with Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska. Will try to track it down. By your logic, we should allow anyone of any age to buy and drive a vehicle of any type without any sort of testing or licensing. Wanna buy and drive a tank around? Sure thing, 'cause you're a "law abiding citizen" so what could go wrong!

EDIT: Here's the chart I was thinking of, from the NY Times:

GunDeaths.pnghttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/opinion/how-to-reduce-shootings.html
Statistics are always so manipulative. Suicide is counted in the gun deaths which account for the majority of those numbers. Per PEW 6/10 of gun deaths were from suicide nation-wide. I haven't looked but it might be higher for Missouri because I think the suicide rate in rural Missouri is pretty high. In my opinion suicide should not be counted in this case because your statistics are implying that over 1300 people in Missouri were either murdered or accidentally shot because of guns exist. 

I'm against guns in general but this gets waaaaay too much attention. 
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PostMar 26, 2021#52

^ so suicide by gun isn't death? guns make suicide really really easy. it absolutely should be counted. nowhere do the researchers claim that "death" means murder only, and none of the graphics claim that either. guns amplify death. period.
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PostMar 26, 2021#53

chriss752 wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
Chris, why do you support terrorists being able to come to Missouri and buy a gun and murder you?
You're putting words into my mouth. I don't support terrorists. I support law abiding people who have the rights to buy a gun of their choosing. 
[...]
Criminals = terrorists, meaning that they do not care about the law.
Isn't law-abiding something of a non sequitur here? If we make background checks the law, then law-abiding people will buy guns after a background check. The law is whatever we choose to make it, "supporting the law-abiding" has nothing to do with what the laws should be. Then you go and take the radical stance that laws don't matter because criminals don't care about the law, so why have any laws at all?
Anyway, personally I hate guns, but 2020 pretty much convinced me that the left needs to rearm.
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PostMar 26, 2021#54

BellaVilla wrote: ↑
Mar 25, 2021
So, the hillbillies in Jeff City have decided give voters the middle finger and not fund Medicaid expansion despite the referendum. We have the shittiest state legislature in the country.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... op-story-1
So, I guess we just live in this gerrymandered world where voters approve legislation but the representatives they elect completely ignore and defeat their will? 

Where's the gd accountability? 
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PostMar 26, 2021#55

wabash wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
BellaVilla wrote: ↑
Mar 25, 2021
So, the hillbillies in Jeff City have decided give voters the middle finger and not fund Medicaid expansion despite the referendum. We have the shittiest state legislature in the country.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... op-story-1
So, I guess we just live in this gerrymandered world where voters approve legislation but the representatives they elect completely ignore and defeat their will? 

Where's the gd accountability? 
It's just going to get worse and worse until there's a violent uprising, that's the only thing that will stop the stealing by the elites. But I don't know that gerrymandering has anything to do with it, the voters in MO have been majority-Republican for awhile, so gerrymandering just increases the margin without flipping the result.

I guess lack of gerrymandering might make the filibuster a factor, but that is itself an anti-majoritarian rule and not exactly in the spirit of respecting the voters' will.
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PostMar 27, 2021#56

^The "majority Republican" business involves a lot of legal shenanigans and obstacles to voting both intentional and incidental that tend to disproportionately effect Democratic voters, so I think it could reasonably be debated whether it's a real majority or just a majority of those able to vote in this mess. No real way to find out without making it easier for everyone to vote, but a certain "majority" is absolutely terrified of that, so it's pretty well a non-starter.
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PostMar 27, 2021#57

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
 Anyway, personally I hate guns, but 2020 pretty much convinced me that the left needs to rearm.
Not sure the left ever disarmed; isn't it more just liberals that are anti-gun? In any case, I'm glad I bought two last year before all the right wing craziness was brought to the forefront. Still wish ammo prices would go back down to reasonable levels, though. If anyone's interested, the Socialist Rifle Association does have an active St. Louis chapter.

I do fully support universal background checks, but I'm not sure they'd necessarily stop people who shouldn't own a gun from having one. It took all of about 2 minutes, if that, for me to pass my NICS checks, so they're not the most stringent of filters as they only account for felonies and not things like mental constitution, and unfortunately, I don't think there will ever be the political wherewithal in this country to actually enact measures that could act to truly curb improper gun ownership. Depending on the courts' interpretation, they might even be unconstitutional given the 2nd Amendment's vague terminology. UBC's should definitely be on the agenda though, since they're one of the few things Democrats and Republicans (publicly) agree on and it's at least one less loophole.
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PostMar 27, 2021#58

BellaVilla wrote: ↑
Mar 25, 2021
So, the hillbillies in Jeff City have decided give voters the middle finger and not fund Medicaid expansion despite the referendum. We have the shittiest state legislature in the country.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... op-story-1
This may get overturned in the courts.  From what I understand, we voted for a Constitution change with Medicaid Expansion.  MOLEG passed just a by-law refusing to fund 1/10 of the $$s that would go to Missouri's poor.  37 other states want the Fed money for their poor, but Moleg goes with mostly Confederate states to keep the poor sick and poor.  The other 9/10 of the money comes from the federal government.  

But Missouri courts are easily manipulated -- they allowed the deceptive wording on the ballots that flipped Clean Missouri back to party gerrymandering.  So who knows.
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PostMar 28, 2021#59

Trololzilla wrote: ↑
Mar 27, 2021
MarkHaversham wrote: ↑
Mar 26, 2021
 Anyway, personally I hate guns, but 2020 pretty much convinced me that the left needs to rearm.
Not sure the left ever disarmed; isn't it more just liberals that are anti-gun?
I guess it depends how you define "the left". My experience with DSA-types is that they're more anti-gun than pro. I don't know any SALT or PSL people so I have no idea what their attitude is.

PostMar 28, 2021#60

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑
Mar 27, 2021
^The "majority Republican" business involves a lot of legal shenanigans and obstacles to voting both intentional and incidental that tend to disproportionately effect Democratic voters, so I think it could reasonably be debated whether it's a real majority or just a majority of those able to vote in this mess. No real way to find out without making it easier for everyone to vote, but a certain "majority" is absolutely terrified of that, so it's pretty well a non-starter.
That's true but it has little or nothing to do with gerrymandering, or with assessing our current electorate. I do wish we could have fully mail-in elections, it was awfully convenient last year.
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PostMar 29, 2021#61

^By definition Gerrymandering doesn't play into statewide elections. Just representative stuff. It's a multi-step process. You get a majority in the legislature so you can rewrite the districts. (Which happened in the 2000 census, more or less.) You use Gerrymandering to strengthen your majority. (See 2010.) You use your newly improved majority to set the legislative agenda more freely, including rewriting voter registration laws, adding ID requirements, instituting voting roll purges, and so forth, so you can finally win statewide office consistently. (See 2016.) It's a process. A long, sad, slow and devastating process that will take generations to fix.
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PostMar 29, 2021#62

I don't buy that it's all down to ballot access. For example, in Feb 2020 Missouri's net Trump approval rating was +8, compared to Illinois' -18 or eventual tipping-point state Wisconsin's -10 (per Morning Consult). In Feb 2018 Gallup polled all adults and found Missouri approval at +9 vs Wisconsin's -9, IL -26 (nationally he was around -10 at that time). That doesn't remotely look like a purple state to me.

https://morningconsult.com/tracking-trump-2/
https://news.gallup.com/poll/247004/tru ... -2018.aspx
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PostMar 30, 2021#63

^I certainly don't think it's all down to access, but I also think polling has become more difficult in the modern age than any point in the past. And I think access and turnout can make it a lot closer. And Trump's numbers aren't necessarily representative, as he's consistently led statewide Republicans by a pretty good margin. For some reason rural Missouri really likes him. I don't want to say we're a purple state anymore, but I don't think we're quite as deep red as Trump makes us appear to be. That said, if the state party continues to put up centrist Democrats I expect we'll continue to lose in more or less the same fashion we have. If we want a different result we might as well at least try something different. Maybe a populist rabble rousing Democrat would stand a better chance. Maybe someone who can talk directly to the majority of our Democratic voters would be more effective. Your call. Vote your conscience and hopefully the rest will follow.
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PostMar 30, 2021#64

Well, its becoming clear that the republicans will not fund Medicaid expansion and will fight it all the way. Hard to see the state's largest corporation remaining in a state with a legislature hostile towards it's business model. 

In other hillbilly legislature news, Peter Merideth's, D-St. Louis, proposal to spend $18M for expanded after school programs was not approved, but the House was able to find $15M so the Department of Conservation can buy a gun range to "preserve practical application of second amendment rights." So yeah socialism is bad unless its socialized guns.

Also, Justin Hill, R-Lake St. Louis, voted against funding medicaid despite his constituents in St. Charles County voting in favor of the Amendment. According to Hill, "Even though my constituents voted for this lie, I’m going to protect them from this lie." So, yeah, Justin Hill thinks his constituents are too ignorant to know what they're voting for. Logic that, ironically, calls into question the legitimacy of his office.
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PostMar 30, 2021#65

not sure how it could be any clearer that MO republicans are actively trying to destroy St. Louis out of retribution for voting democrat.
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PostMar 30, 2021#66

BellaVilla wrote: ↑
Mar 30, 2021
the House was able to find $15M so the Department of Conservation can buy a gun range 
A $15 million gun range? Is there gold or oil beneath it? Politics aside, that seems exorbitant. 
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PostMar 30, 2021#67

wabash wrote: ↑
Mar 30, 2021
BellaVilla wrote: ↑
Mar 30, 2021
the House was able to find $15M so the Department of Conservation can buy a gun range 
A $15 million gun range? Is there gold or oil beneath it? Politics aside, that seems exorbitant. 
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing and my two second google search did not yield any info.

Also, apparently this Justin Hill fellow from Lake St. Louis attended the capitol insurrection. Real piece of work, this guy.
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PostMar 31, 2021#68

Are they building a new range or simply buying out an existing private range?

If they're buying one, I guess I could see why the cost is too high, but if not, then $15 million is waaaay too much - an outdoor range should cost next to nothing. All it requires is some clearing, grading, and minor construction. Most of what's needed for construction is a backstop (usually earthen), shooting positions, and the range itself. It's mainly moving dirt and pouring a bit of concrete, so there's no reason for an outdoor range to cost so much. Even a military-spec or indoor range probably wouldn't cost more than a few million.  Sounds like they'd be sending quite a bit of pork the way of a contractor friendly to MOLeg; I wouldn't be opposed to an audit.
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PostMar 31, 2021#69

I can see a championship sporting complex, like the one in Sparta, Illinois, costing $15M+, but does Missouri have anything like that?
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PostMar 31, 2021#70

They probably bought the land from a donor.
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PostMar 31, 2021#71

If gun owners want a range, they should just work harder and buy their own.  Maybe if they weren't wasting all of their money on guns, they could afford a gun range.
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PostMar 31, 2021#72

I could see, maybe, providing funding for a gun education and shooting center at a major university that competes in riflery. For instance, Southeast Missouri State is in the Ohio Vally Conference, which currently sponsors "rifle" as a sport (which is coed), although SEMO doesn't currently compete in it. It would at least then have an educational institution as a sort of sponsor/custodian and not be so different from the state allocating funds for a university swimming center, volleyball gym, basketball arena, tennis center, etc.... although would obviously be more controversial, especially considering America's long history of school shootings.  

But without a university connection the state is just going into the shooting range business and using tax payer dollars to compete with private enterprises. That doesn't make sense whatever side of the political divide you're on. 
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PostApr 01, 2021#73

The Missouri Department of Conservation already operates a number of shooting ranges on state property. 

https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/conservation- ... ing-ranges
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PostApr 01, 2021#74

framer wrote: ↑
Apr 01, 2021
The Missouri Department of Conservation already operates a number of shooting ranges on state property. 

https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/conservation- ... ing-ranges
I had no idea. That's not surprising and yet really strange at the same time. Thanks Framer. 
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PostApr 01, 2021#75

Jay Henges at I-44/Antire is a pretty nice little range. Range Officers can be a bit anal but that's a small price to pay. Certainly better than many of the private ranges in the state, which sometimes literally require proof of lifelong NRA and Republican Party registration to use lmao.
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