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[MrRoboto75]

So what do you guys think of Yeonmi Park?

who?

[Frumple]

Yeah, I think that's the first time I've seen the name, and a cursory google doesn't show anything I'm inclined to care much about. Are they supposed to matter for some reason?

[anewaname]

About her, I have a few good thoughts and no bad thoughts.

She is just another person telling her story and by extension, the story of other people who died or are trapped or are trapping others. There are plenty of other people who escaped similar situations in other places, in wartime or not, and their stories are often the only thing you know about what is happening there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. - Abraham Lincoln

[Lidku]

Yeah, I think that's the first time I've seen the name, and a cursory google doesn't show anything I'm inclined to care much about. Are they supposed to matter for some reason?

She's a North Korean defector who's steadily becoming famous in the US - among Right-wing or Right-leaning circles. At first she mostly spoke about her own experiences in North Korea (who at times, has basically been caught embellishing stories she's told), but now after moving to the US, she's been full on going straight into American "culture war" and has just been getting rich off that for a while now.

[EuchreJack]

Supreme Court sides with Arizona death row inmate seeking to challenge sentence in federal court

Smart decision by the Court, kinda stupid it was 5-4...

Without diving into the case, my guess is that it shows that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito basically want to Federal Courts/Government to only hear gun cases but otherwise let States do whatever they want.
Correction: Four Justices believe that. It's the very first words of their dissent. They basically just want to dismantle the Federal system. They're no better than Confederate Rebel Scum....

[nenjin]

Republican Bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America.

Next they can have a bill to make the national pastime shooting children.

[EuchreJack]

Republican Bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America.

Next they can have a bill to make the national pastime shooting children.

Fuck you libtard

But in all seriousness, it's another stupid bill.
The M1 Garand is far more worthy of the honor, as the gun that won WW2 for the United States.

In contrast, the AR-15 is a knockoff of the main service rifle from a war that America LOST. And that main service rifle was often blamed for America losing...

They're both also semi-automatic rifles, and the M1 Garand better emphasises the advantages of that firing mechanism.

[Madman198237]

The AR-15 is not a knockoff of the AK-47 but an evolution of the AR-10 to a smaller caliber, and the AR-10 could if anything could be said to have been inspired by the Stg-44 itself, and the AK-47 is itself based on (in role and some design cues) that same German weapon... from WWII. Which we won.

Unless you mean the AR-15 is a knockoff M16? In which case...what? Because the AR-15 is just the Armalite company designation for the same weapon they sold to the US military as the M16 but in a civilian semiauto-only version. It's not a knockoff, just the internal company designation instead of the formal military designation, which of course the civilian company doesn't have the rights to use. And of course nobody intelligent blames the M16 for somehow losing us the Vietnam War. It was (infamously and not really deservedly) regarded as unreliable to start with but was then fixed... and didn't change the course of the war in either direction.

[MrRoboto75]

Quick, someone play the national anthem in pitch shifted m1 garand pings.

[Lord Shonus]

And that main service rifle was often blamed for America losing...

Only by idiots.

Vietnam was an unwinnable war from the time US involvement started. Unlike Kim Il-Sung in Korea (a Chinese-raised guerilla who hadn't set foot in Korea for almost three decades when he was put in charge of the Soviet occupied zone), Ho Chi Minh was a genuine national hero for kicking out the French. Unlike Syngman Rhee in Korea (a near-fascist brute, but one who had been actively fighting Japan his entire life and had previous leadership roles in Korea before being picked to lead the American occupied zone), the leadership of South Vietnam (after 1963) was a fractured patchwork of coups and counter-coups held together by not very much. In any fair election, the country would have been reunified under Ho Chi Minh and everybody knew it.

Even ignoring this untenable political situation, the military situation was also untenable. Much has been made of the stupid way the US conducted the war, but this was fundamentally caused by geopolitical concerns - the measures needed to actually prosecute the war with a chance of success would have come very close to open warfare with the Soviet Union, which was a risk nobody was willing to take. At a tactical level US forces often did quite well, but wars are not won solely (or even primarily) on the battlefield.

Vietnam was a result of the US blundering into a war that should never have been fought and straight up could not be won.

Blaming the M16 was just one of the many excuses people came up with to say "well, we didn't really lose!". It is true that the new rifle had serious growing pains, most of them not due to the fundamental design. Some were the result of cost-cutting (parts that were intended to be chromed had the chroming omitted to save money), others because Colt and Armalite weren't given enough warning to make changes in response to other changes (the loading for the ammunition changed - the cheaper and more energetic powder was also dirtier (exacerbated by the omitted chrome), and the barrel rifling didn't stabilize the altered round properly), and some were stupidity that bordered on (and may have been, from people who didn't want to change to the "Mattel Rifle") outright sabotage (troops were told that the rifle did not need cleaned, and no cleaning kits were issued). None of this fundamentally mattered for the course of the war, and most were fixed fairly early on.

[Travis Bickle]

Republican Bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America.

He should have just introduced a bill to repeal the NFA if he wanted to make a symbolic gesture; such a bill wouldn't have considerably less chance of making it through a Democrat-controlled Senate.

[EuchreJack]

Republican Bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America.

He should have just introduced a bill to repeal the NFA if he wanted to make a symbolic gesture; such a bill wouldn't have considerably less chance of making it through a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Republicans have already introduced those bill(s).  Representative Asshat wanted to do something that would get his name in the newspaper as different.

[Travis Bickle]

Republican Bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America.

He should have just introduced a bill to repeal the NFA if he wanted to make a symbolic gesture; such a bill wouldn't have considerably less chance of making it through a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Republicans have already introduced those bill(s).  Representative Asshat wanted to do something that would get his name in the newspaper as different.

I guess he was late to the party then. I'm sure his constituents will still be able to rest easy knowing that the liberals have been thoroughly triggered (this is probably true) and that will make them satisfied enough to think that things are looking up in the world.

[Duuvian]

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/24/st-louis-missouri-police-department/

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Police in St. Louis, Missouri, are working to wrest control of their department from the city’s progressive mayor and put it in the hands of the Republican governor.

Law enforcement unions argue that local control has “put politics in policing” and that state oversight would help address an increase in homicides and a drop in police morale and staffing levels. They have rallied around Senate Bill 78, which would reinstate a Civil War-era system of state control overturned by Missouri voters in 2012 — and make St. Louis one of the only major cities in the country without authority over its own police force. The attempt by the Missouri Legislature to strip power away from city officials is a “slap in the face” to constituents in St. Louis, Mayor Tishaura Jones said.

The move comes just two years after St. Louis first elected Jones and progressives won a majority on the city’s Board of Aldermen. While police department operations “are definitely not perfect,” Jones told The Intercept, the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution. Local officials should have control over how law enforcement resources are deployed, she said.

The bill targeting elected leaders in St. Louis is one of several recent efforts across the country to undercut the authority of local progressive officials on policing and prosecution matters. Jones and her allies say the bill is an example of police turning their political efforts toward legislation as their preferred candidates have continued to lose at the ballot box.

No taxation without representation? Security state wants those $

[hector13]

‘Tain’t money, it’s oversight. Would you rather be dictated to by some libtard pussy who won’t let you shoot first and ask questions never because the suspect you didn’t identify yourself to is now full of extra holes, or the guy who’ll probably give you military surplus if you ask real nice, and help you justify you and 17 of your buddies tag-teaming a kerb-stomping ‘cause th perp smelled of weed?