And Soviet corruption sounded pretty awesome for my grand-uncle, and his children, grand-children, and various hangers-on. He had an incredibly lucrative career over his life, floating from one bit of graft to another (He continued to be quite successful at it long after the fall of communism, with his career peaking during an 'obscure' international sporting event that took place in Sochi in 2014).

I'm sure it sounded less awesome to the people he hurt, but hey, it's all relative to where you stand, what you personally value, and how concerned about externalities.

Who are the people who own machine guns hurting?

An argument can easily be made that normalizing gun fetishism, and the prevalence of public carry leads to a society that, during tense situations is often a trigger pull away from escalating to immediately lethal violence.

It's rare for people to get shot and killed at a, say, a political protest in a society without such norms. It's rarer yet for the killer to be found to have been in the right.

You don't see teenagers in Canada think that it's a swell idea to drive across the country so that they could LARP Call of Duty at a protest with an AR-15. The two cultures' outlook on guns is different, and one very actively discourages that kind of behaviour... While the other one seems to encourage it.

No, that's not a valid argument at all. Most people aren't even aware you can buy machine guns.

And what does owning machine guns have to do with public carry? I asked about machine gun ownership.

And what does a teenager driving over state lines have to do with machine gun ownership?

You're really stretching to answer my question.

> And what does owning machine guns have to do with public carry? I asked about machine gun ownership.

'I don't like a society where people can and do buy machine guns' is a pretty obvious shorthand for 'I don't like American gun culture'.

And a lot of people feel very strongly, in both directions, about the consequences of American gun culture.

I can’t follow your logic at all here. You called out specifically machine gun ownership.

You realize people legally own machine guns in Canada, right? Sure, you can’t get a permit now, but former owners are grandfathered in.

What do you think of Canada’s fun (edit: gun) culture?

i cant understand why would anyone other than military (even that for a deterrent maybe) would want a machine gun where every bullet can kill and u can fire so many bullets every second.

The US Constitution makes it clear that the people and the military are not on the same page. The US people is supposed to have access to all the weapons that the military has... According to the old law.

This is a cultural consequence of achieving independence from an oppressor. People who desire control of others will always organize, oppress and build militaries. They invade, so peace is not an option with this personality type. Hence why seemingly normal people can buy machine guns. - There are predators around.

The difference in the US is that the default is you can unless you have a good reason not too.

I recall reading there has never been a crime committed with a legally owned machine gun in the US”. I think that changed a while ago when some criminal murdered someone, but do you believe banning everyone from owning something that had been used in a crime once?

That seems very paternalistic. Which is a fine stance. It’s just not the one the US adheres too.

You "forgot" where the guys who were killed chased and attacked the guy who shot them. You also "forgot" the guy who was shot in the arm had just pulled a pistol with that arm.

As to the "political protest", they were burning buildings and attacking people. (Curiously, many of these businesses were black-owned.)

The people chasing him were responding to what they thought was an active shooter situation, in a country where active shooter situations are a common occurrence. That's also a consequence of American gun culture.

There's a reason you don't see protests and hockey riots turning into gunfights north of the 49th. People don't bring guns to them, because they know that if they use them, they are going to get an absolute world of shit dumped on their heads by the courts.

> The people chasing him were responding to what they thought was an active shooter situation

Even if we assume that they actually thought that, they attacked someone who they had no reason to believe was involved in said "active shooter situation." The most favorable interpretation is that they were vigilantes who attacked with deadly force.

If Rittenhouse had chased down someone you agreed with politically, claiming "an active shooter situation", you'd want his head.

No, they were career criminals who came there to commit violence with impunity.