I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because:
- Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working".
- Having to increasingly go do cable TV disconnects because people were usually in a bad way and I had more than one colleague that had either had a gun pulled on them or straight-up shot and left to die up a pole for most of a day while trying to disconnect cable.
- Having to increasingly go on cable TV installs because people's shitty TVs backfeeding electricity into the cable line meant I was getting zapped at least once a week.
That said, I met a lot of cool people, gave out a lot of free TV/HBO because I didn't care unless the customer was a dick, wrote down a lot of funny stories and ultimately realized that I could go college in spite of dropping out of high school because I happened to install the non-traditional student advisor's cable modem.
My colleagues said they'd see me back at the shop in four years after I graduated with a philosophy degree. Jokes on them, I dropped out after getting a job at Google.
The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals.
I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this.
I did a similar job early on in my career (involving cheap phone calling devices with customers including consumers and often dodgy 'calling shops'). But the most dangerous situation I faced was a customer with a heavy dose of the flu, lol. And roadside fastfood.
You're right that the US is very proud of their trigger and muzzle discipline. Or at least half of it. The other half points loaded guns with the safeties off directly at their own crotches to own the libs[0].
Going a layer deeper, Americans really, really love to abuse the shit out of customer service workers. To put it extremely charitably, we're used to being fucked by corpos so we pre-emptively fuck them back in the dumbest way possible. Less charitably, our country has a bunch of bullies that want to shout at anything they can bully. I don't think they'd actually pull the trigger, but, y'know, law of large numbers, times small but non-zero probability of homicide by virtue a gun being present on the scene equals probably at least one murdered cable tech.
That Vice article and the pluralistic blog spam post don't understand what a Fudd is. A Fudd is a curmudgeonly, old fashioned gun owner who is judgmental about people owning modern firearms. They favor hunting and shotgun games over handguns and semiautomatic rifles. If they own handguns at all, think revolvers and 1911s instead of Glocks. Generally, Fudds tend to be very adamant about safe gun handling, often advocating for range rules that are overly restrictive like prohibiting aimed rapid fire. They're not the kind of people who point loaded handguns at their crotches to get a reaction out of people online.
The people who are pointing loaded guns at their crotches are mocking people who take the four rules of gun handling very seriously, including both Fudds and most "normal" gun owners. They're trolls that exist almost exclusively online. They don't make up anywhere near half of gun owners and they're unwelcome at pretty much any gun club or public range.
I agree with almost all of this, but a lot of the people who point loaded guns at their crotches act like normal people at the range or shoot at unsupervised DNR land
> Americans really, really love to abuse the shit out of customer service workers.
That wasn't my experience when I worked in customer service for a few years. Maybe 10% of people were like that and it was always because they were tired of not getting solutions to their problems, and that was always because their account fell into a bad spot in the customer service flow policy (suspicious activity, low LTV, fraud, etc.). It was really hard to take any of that personally.
I'd argue it's more like the corporate powers that be often have unforgiving policies and account review practices sending people to the moon with anger.
> It was really hard to take any of that personally.
Indeed. When companies abuse their customers, customer service is not only the only way by which a problem can even hope to be resolved, but it is the job of customer service to do so. They are representatives of their companies, the interface between the customer and the service their company offers.
Now, I don't sanction abuse, of course, and pulling guns on people is insane, but that's not what you have in mind here, and knowing how tortured and stretched the definition of "abuse" some people have is, I will say you do sometimes need to be somewhat aggressive and push to escalate your problem to get the customer service rep. to transition on their script's finite state machine to a helpful state and outcome. In those cases, don't blame the customer. Blame the corporation.
Corporations often like to drag their feet to maximize profit with all sorts of ridiculous and unsavory tactics. It's like being automatically enrolled in something by default and burdening the customer with unsubscribing; on average you can steal at least a little money from those who don't unsubscribe, or do so only after a couple months have passed. The time and burden of doing so (a form of theft), and the lack of genuine consent (Pacta sunt servanda, buddy!), doesn't seem to be accounted for.
Most of the replies have turned this into a gun debate. Realistically it’s because he was involved in disconnecting service. When you have to do any sort of job that puts you in the position of taking something away from poor people, you’re at high risk, because taking something away from someone who is desperate and likely feels the got the short end from society is not a recipe for a jolly day.
In your average American neighborhood none of this would happen. In the rougher poor neighborhoods, everybody thinks everyone is out to get them (and frankly they might be right), is on edge, and likely has a loose association to the law or social mores.
Without going into an entire sociology diatribe, in America there are many reasons someone may end up poor, but low impulse control, lack of education, and an inability to follow rules tend to top the list, all of which can lead to very troubling outcomes that wouldn’t happen among the gainfully employed average, whom also pay their bills and would not be targeted for disconnection of service.
The majority of Americans own or have access to firearms (although it’s barely a minority of “households”), but incidents involving firearms happen in poorer neighborhoods predominantly. The mix is not great, and we should do something about it as a society but it’s a complex and somewhat intractable issue that’s not fully solved by just throwing money at it (just look at council houses in the UK as an example of similar outcomes despite social support).
>Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals
Europe? Literally lots of people have guns, where I live, from 01 Sept there's plenty of gunshots ringing out scaring one of my dogs. I know two people in the uk that have shotguns (police checked, locked away in the attic). There are many ww2 firearms in circulation (Serbia, I believe just had an amnesty), so 'literally' is incorrect.
The difference is: guns aren't common, and certainly aren't often carried, and most definitely not openly (apart from farmers and hunters, but the gun must be unloaded and broken(.
My fave is talking to Americans that 'can't wait to get back home so I can carry my gun, for protection, it's my right'. Not a single one of them has been threatened whilst here. Nor have they been threatened in the States....but it's their right to protect themselves from the government.
I always ask, if their government started being 'oppressive', how long would either sides' ammunition last? Not a single person I've spoken to has more than a few days ammo available.
I live in New Zealand, and many people have guns. The difference is if you point it at someone at minimum you’ll lose your gun licence and have the weapon confiscated.
I used to work at a multinational, we were quite amused when we saw an update to the US workplace rules that prohibited firearms anywhere on company property. One of my colleagues has his rifle in the office - he was going on a hunting trip and leaving immediately after work. Of course it was locked in a gun case and the bolt was stored separately, but it was amusing.
Should it though? Prerequisite of a pardon is that you accept guilt. If people are guilty of being reckless with firearms, should they still have access to firearms?
> Europe? Literally lots of people have guns, where I live,
Exactly.
Not only outside-EU countries; I live in EU country that has ratio of registered guns to cops ~4,5:1.
The difference to US is, that a) there's no open carry and b) no legal owner is going to threaten with a gun over something trivial (it is a good way to lose your license).
These two things make people carrying guns invisible, but not non-existing.
> Not a single person I've spoken to has more than a few days ammo available.
Anecdotes aren't the strongest, but no worries, many of the small group of people I hang with have the combined capacity of a batallion, along with manufacturing capabilities in the case it's needed. All really great people too. We'd welcome a Euro like yourself in a heartbeat despite any differences we may have. Good luck out there.
>I always ask, if their government started being 'oppressive', how long would either sides' ammunition last? Not a single person I've spoken to has more than a few days ammo available.
It's especially absurd when you realize that these people scream that they need guns to protect them from an oppressive government. Meanwhile in the US, we have millions and millions of dollars a year in Civil Asset Forfeiture, which even when justified is a direct impingement on your Fourth amendment rights, and just an assault on justice in general. These same people are also loudly applauding laws in states like Florida and Texas that explicitly oppress people of certain types. They also support laws that prevent women from getting absolutely NECESSARY health care.
The ONLY "right" they care about is the right to own guns, yet how many of them took up arms and came after the government after ruby ridge? Only one really did, and they used a bomb to kill a hundred innocent people in a completely unrelated part of the government.
EVERYTHING about "gun culture" in america is about "feeling" powerful, about being "strong", about fear of nebulous bullshit that doesn't exist. These people will seek out a video of some drugged up criminal taking twenty bullets before finally collapsing, and use that to justify buying the biggest handgun they can afford because of "stopping power" as if they need to defend their home from the damn hulk, and definitely don't care about over penetration accidentally killing their kids in the next room over.
These people simply want a world where might makes right, but are terrified because they aren't "might", so they get guns. They OBSESS over hero fantasies, gathering on message boards or facebook to talk about how they "totally would have stopped that shooter". They joke about shooting children that date their daughter, they make jokes about how "someone" should shoot people for being wrong. They just generally don't think other people deserve safety or life, and that the penalty for any action should be swift death from a cops gun. They then are stunningly silent when a cop shoots a legal firearm owner because the cop got jumpy about a black guy saying he had a gun. They often ARE the cops actually. Meanwhile an actual active shooter shows up in their local school and they take their sweet ass time doing nothing while hearing kids dying. Remember, the gun heavy community of Uvalde had many of their children murdered while heavily armed cops sat outside and prevented parents from trying to save their kids on their own. Did the local community rise up against this government force and overthrow a useless and dangerous government? No, they voted for them again in the next election. Because gun nuts would never shoot a cop, because they are friends.
Which is funny, because what do they think "the government" they would have to overthrow is? The ATF, and worse, liberals. That's as far as it goes. When they say "The second amendment is to protect us from an oppressive government", that means liberals sending the ATF to confiscate their guns and THAT'S IT.
What's funny is that the main historical example of a large scale uprising against the american state, the civil war, was fought like any other military conflict: with state owned firearms, including United States owned firearms stolen from american armories. They also seem convinced the the army would be on their side, instead of most of the military staying loyal to their commanders as is the norm in that situation. They point to Afghanistan as "look the US can't fight a resident population with guns", utterly oblivious to the fact that Afghanistan is what the US military looks like when its trying to play good cop. If you want to know what the US does to an armed and rebelling community, simply look how the US treated labor unions in the early 1900s. Here's a hint: They flatten an entire city block to kill them and it doesn't even make it into a history book.
And to top off this stupid shit pie? The NRA, the main advocate organization for gun ownership in the US, was run by Oliver North, of Iran-Contra infamy, until 2019, and their main funding comes through Russian hands nowadays.
In fairness, everyone I know in the US who owns firearms - which is basically everyone I know here - takes safety and knowledge of the laws around storing/carrying/brandishing/firing them very seriously. But the sheer scale of the US population and the absolute number of guns is just difficult to conceive of from a European perspective. We have something like 60 privately owned guns in this country for every person in the Czech Republic. So even if only 1% of our gun-owning population were irresponsible or criminal with them, it would still add up to a lot of deaths every day.
I think it's playing a similar argument as the GP with US-guns-per-Czech-person. OK, Czechia is a bigger part of Europe than Montana is of US, but it looks as if Montana was picked to show how the original argument is invalid.
> There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana.
> There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders.
gonna need a fact-check on these claims, please, because initial googling reveals these are, at the very least, false or misleading
I live in the Northeast US and very few people have guns here.
Incidentally, even if it is difficult to purchase a gun, it's trivial to order a crossbow or airbow, which has just as much 1-shot stopping power (although, of course, after that 1 shot, reload can be a problem, less so with the airbow)
> Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the US are 13 times greater than they are in France, and 22 times greater than in the European Union as a whole.
I also live in the Northeast, but that’s a point against when talking about this stuff; when you live in the only reasonably run part of the US, it is easy to misunderstand how ridiculous things are in much of the country.
Gun ownership is not evenly distributed. Their are as many guns as citizens in the US, but out of ten people, 8 have no guns, 1 has a single handgun, and 1 has 10 guns.
That isn’t really a fact-checking issue, though, it is an alternative interpretation of the data. I think your post is a fine way to begin a reasonable argument.
I actually don’t care to argue back. I object to the argument-less fact check request and insinuation that the figures are misleading, on principle. It is annoying to give your conversation partners homework for no reason.
Depends where in the Northeast you are! Half the people in Vermont own a gun, New Hampshire and Maine aren’t much different. NY/RI/MA/CT/NJ have relatively low gun ownership rates, for sure.
Does that include places like Switzerland, where every male is issued with a gun as part of their national service/canton militia?
I think the cultural problem is everyone wants to be like Stallone or Arnie, which would suggest the US population has an inferiority complex towards the old world.
Worth noting, it is impossible to both have a gun for home defense, and be a "responsible" gun owner. Being a responsible gun owner implies the guns are properly locked up, away from ammunition, because kids regularly play with daddy's guns and kill each other and themselves, but if your gun is locked up in a safe separately from it's ammo like it is often legally required to be, there's no way you can actually use it for home defense.
But everyone still claims they are "A responsible gun owner" because all that actually means to the gun culture in the US is that you are white or rural or conservative.
Same, but I suspect there's a bit of selection bias going on there in both our cases. I just don't think I'd be able to sustain a friendship with the kind of person who owns guns and handles them irresponsibly, and I expect the same might be true of you.
Except everyone who "has a hostile reaction to people who handle guns irresponsibly" has a story of a range or person they know who does exactly that, and their response is simply to stay away, instead of narcing on them and making the community safer at the expense of being a tattle tale.
So there are plenty of people who call themselves "responsible gun owners" but turn a complete blind eye to bad behavior.
Or they will keep a loaded gun in their bedroom for home defense, something that is outright NOT responsible gun owner behavior, yet is the primary cited reason people own guns in the US.
I guess that seems reasonable, but now it makes me wonder about the graph - it can't be that the people who take gun ownership and security safety only know people who do likewise - how many people who take these matters seriously still have friends they hang out with who take it less seriously.
Why? Well bad apples and stuff, it's hard to believe perfect discipline is maintained when some of those around you have less than perfect discipline.
It seems like a question that one could probably get pretty close to answering (although not perfect).
Just from personal experience among my friends and acquaintances - and anyone I meet who I chance to talk about guns with - there is a very strong self-reinforcing culture of safe handling and responsibility. People will come down incredibly hard on anyone who seems inept or who they even hear speaking about some kind of irresponsible behavior. Now, I'd say about half of these are ex-military people, but they set a standard and keep other people in line. Of course, perfect discipline isn't maintained in this country. But it's actually one of the few areas where pretty much everyone knows they must act like a responsible adult. People are well aware that it's their life or their freedom are stake if they mess up. I know guys who get drunk as skunks and get in bar fights, but who would never carry their gun when they go out drinking, or anywhere besides the woods.
> Just from personal experience among my friends and acquaintances
This is significantly biasing your perspective, and I don’t think you quite realize by how much.
There are many, many gun owners who are incompetent and irresponsible. There is an entire spectrum, and it’s not a purely bimodal distribution with 95% safety-conscious owners and 5% hoodlums.
>Of course, perfect discipline isn't maintained in this country.
well ok, I don't know but there are stats on how many adults have guns, and there are stats on misuses of guns. I suppose a clever statistician would be able to get to some potential overview of how many people who own guns have decent discipline?
Not saying that's you but someone on this site. It is difficult to find anything with a query on Google nowadays, but the things I do find - like https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/ implies to me that the amount of the population that maintains your level of discipline is very low.
The reality is that nearly every "responsible gun owner" knows gun owners who are not responsible, and usually just ignore that unfortunate reality. None of my family members, including the ones who "take safety seriously" and lock up their stuff from their kids, would EVER narc on the family member who thinks shooting up their back yard while drunk or high is okay. They rationalize this through all sorts of "but they aren't hurting anyone" wishful thinking, ignoring that being irresponsible with a gun in one way usually means they are being dangerous with firearms in other ways.
So many people provide direct evidence that they do not respect the danger or power of firearms, and most gun owners just look the other way.
>takes safety and knowledge of the laws around storing/carrying/brandishing/firing them very seriously.
What matters is what happens when their friend does something dangerous with a gun, and they don't seem to care. My entire family is "responsible gun owner" including my brother who definitely seems to care about safety, but all that goes out the window when another family member brings out the guns at a family BBQ while absolutely drunk. You can bet your ass nobody said anything. If you aren't willing to narc on irresponsible gun behavior, you ARE NOT a responsible gun owner.
Also, Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun across several state lines, possibly stirred up shit, got shot at, and killed the person doing so. While the actual event of shooting was ruled "self defense", how is it "responsible" to take your firearm to a protest with the intent of being a counter protester. If "Anti fa" did such a thing, these people would riot, but Rittenhouse was invited to talk at fucking CPAC.
That's the kind of person these people lionize. They are envious that he was able to kill someone with a gun and get away with it. They want to be him.
Drill down to state levels, or further to local areas, and those numbers change tremendously. In many parts of the country gun ownership is almost universal.
And you might not even know; not everyone tells everyone that they own a gun.
Assume those numbers are wrong. Many gun owners lie on various polls and surveys when asked about firearms ownership. The reason generally being a certain level of paranoia about firearms and firearms owners being cataloged in a way that could support a hypothetical future confiscation effort.
Firearms owners may well still be in the minority, but there's probably a fair bit of error there.
Yeah, my father keeps everything locked in a safe, but the other day, some cops knocked on my door asking if I knew anything about a gun that was stolen from the passenger seat of an unlocked truck parked across the street.
I'm sure everyone says they take these things seriously, and I'm sure you're a fine upstanding citizen who mostly interacts with other fine, upstanding citizens. However, we do know, due to the number of offenses made public thanks to Florida's Sunshine law and other public sources, that we simply can't make the generalization that people take these gun safety measures seriously.
It seems like you’re the one that hasn’t been here.
That’s a shocking number of gun related incidents in the GP. Seems like accessing TV/internet must be an issue like road rage that brings out the absolute worst in people. People don’t go around popping shots at technicians or waving their weapons around in the US.
> People don’t go around popping shots at technicians or waving their weapons around in the US.
I think that's highly dependent on where in the US, and what kind of neighborhoods and people these technicians are working in.
The idea that such places exist in the US does not surprise me in the least. But at the same time, there are certainly places in the US where the majority of gun owners do handle their firearms responsibly.
Nearly every cable technician has these stories. A lot of what cable technicians do is go to a house to disconnect for non-payment. These people are rarely well off, and are often a subset of the worst of the worst people in the country. Cable technicians can tell you stories of honest to goodness nazis, terrifyingly mentally broken people, lunatics who think they should be able to shoot anyone stepping foot on their property, etc. Basically if there is a person who is shitty in any way, they probably won't pay their cable and the technician is going to get to meet them.
My brother is an avid gun "advocate" (nut), but he still wasn't happy being threatened with guns from yokels who don't like paying bills.
If you work as a cable technician, 6 customers a day, that's around 2000 in a year. If 1 in 100 is mentally ill, in a bad mood (TV broken!) and with a gun ...
Maybe there's some selection bias: You'll tend to meet angry people, who are more dumb (couldn't fix the problem themselves?)?
Maybe in any weapon loving place, a job where you visit lots of people at their homes and help fixing something that's broken, is mildly dangerous?
Especially if you’re disconnecting service - I dare say the repo tow truck drivers encounter MANY more gun incidents than the average AAA tow truck driver.
However I suspect the repo company allows its employees (or they’re self-employed) to carry in retaliation - I strongly suspect that the cable companies don’t allow their repairmen to pack heat.
It’s like the thin bread line - pizza delivery is more dangerous than being a cop.
If anything, that statistic (roughly one per person) doesn't inspire confidence. The correct takeaway isn't "wow, so few of the guns in America are used to kill people." It's "wow, there are so many guns that anybody can have one, regardless of whether they are fit to."
This is objectively false. You're attempting to portray a personal opinion as fact. Bad form, and definitely not appropriate for HN. Please don't do that here.
Your insistence on a right to a gun for self-protection comes at the cost of others using their right to a gun for crime.
If nobody had guns, you wouldn't need to a gun to protect yourself from someone else with a gun.
The problem of course is that the genie is already out of the bottle. We can't take the guns away, they're all over the place in the USA already. Even if the Second Amendment was repealed, all that would happen is that only criminals would have guns.
Yes, you still need a gun even if the criminal only has a knife or a baseball bat. You will not win with someone with those tools. And no woman will win even if she has the same knife or bat. So yes, women need guns.
It is impossible to lump all US gun owners into a single stereotype, when a third of Americans own one. Any chunk of the population that large includes people of all kinds. In my experience, the people who are most responsible are the ones who you don't even know own guns, because they keep them locked up and out of sight.
People vastly underestimate the number of privately held firearms in Europe, and how “easy” it is to obtain one.
It’s not an insurmountable obstacle, and depending on the country can range from “California difficulty” to “basically an NFA stamp” but they’re out there.
Often they are not “the scary black rifle” type, but they’re still firearms.
This is very country-dependent; in some they're actually quite common, in some they're extremely heavily restricted. In Ireland, say, you will require a legitimate reason to have one (essentially the only legitimate reasons are sports shooting, hunting, and certain farming activities), training, secure storage inspected and signed off on by the police, and permission from the police. In practice, it's so onerous that most people doing sports shooting would use a gun owned by the club. Automatic rifles are completely illegal to own, as are nearly all pistols (except for use by the military and by specialist police; ordinary police don't have firearms). Tasers etc are also effectively illegal to own (there being no legitimate sports/hunting/farming applications).
Oddly, crossbows are also restricted, though may be licensed as above; as I understand it this is due to a legislative error which no-one has gotten around to fixing.
Exactly - gun laws are way more complicated than people assume - some countries on paper will be identical to Ireland but basically anyone can say "hunting" and the police don't do much more than just sign off on it.
And in other countries, they make no distinction between a black-powder blunderbuss and fully automatic military weapons - they're both equally hard to obtain, so the people who do get a gun end up with a select-fire rifle.
Pistols are often more heavily regulated than rifles, because they're concealable.
In the USA you can just buy a black-powder cannon if you want. Artillery not so much if it is autoloading. The "own a musket for home defense" copy pasta comes to mind.
I've known a few people into black powder guns and cannons. It is a fun hobby for them. One of them got into it by way of model rocketry, the rest were folks who were generally into "mountain man" era skills, technology and reenactment (for history and fun, not prepper illusions).
There was also a tradition at our high school to shoot off a cannon each time our football team scored a point at home games (just the powder no projectile).
I'm now curious if one could license one here. It doesn't _obviously_ fall into any of the categories that would make it prohibited (as opposed to merely restricted), and it's not like it'd be very useful for criminal purposes, but it might be hard to sell the gardai on the idea that it was essential for farming. (Surely at some point there's been a sport that involves cannon, tho...)
One thing I would note is that, unlike other utilities, Cable and Internet are not deemed 'necessary' in the us. This means that they exist in nearly unregulated space when it comes to their business operations. These Cable companies are remarkably careless and are liable to take rather abusive actions such as delivering non-functioning service and then billing tech charges to 'fix' the service with many customers ending up in a loop of paid techs coming to fix things they cannot fix because the issue is elsewhere. It is a brutally helpless feeling and when the only thing that can make you feel in control is a gun...
All of that is to say that the companies really do put the techs in harms way in their operations.
Americans take pride in having them, but being properly trained in safely handling or effectively using them is optional. Try and force it and you’ll get the tyranny talk.
Sadly I’ve heard many stories of cable/dish techs dealing with this nonsense.
The opposition to mandatory training is because the actual goal is usually to harass and discourage or raise revenue rather than improve safety. There's plenty that's been tried and none of it seems to have improved safety outcomes. The people who are irresponsible with guns pretty much always know better and decided to be stupid, anyway.
Well that's kind of the key point of making some rules (and training) about handling firearms, to have a legally valid reason to prohibit the irresponsible people from handling firearms if they have demonstrated that they won't, and can't use "I didn't know" as an excuse after they have decided to be stupid.
The first step, of course, is coming to an agreement whether that subpopulation of 'irreversibly irresponsible' people should have the right to bear arms or not; in USA there doesn't seem to be a consensus about that.
That's a very shallow reading of that particular situation. The robber was pointing a gun at people. At the point when someone threatens life like that, regardless of whether the motives are personal or material, it is reasonable and legally justified for someone to use deadly force to end that threat. The only real criticism that can be leveled against that particular shooter is that in hindsight he continued shooting after the robber was arguably no longer a threat.
> That's a very shallow reading of that particular situation.
Yes, with a bit more depth to the reading, you'd know that the robber had already collected the money and was leaving when he was shot in the back.
And what happens when another do-gooder walks into this taqueria, sees this guy shoot someone, and then grab money off the body? Wouldn't that person be in the clear to shoot the first guy?
It's not clear that the robber was leaving at the time he was shot. The robber was still threatening people with the gun when he was shot. Shooting the robber in the back was a way to get the jump on him—drawing on someone who has already drawn on you is generally suicide.
As for the risk that someone else might mistake the shooter for the robber, anyone who has taken a concealed carry class has learned that there are risks to defending yourself. It's a choice you make because you don't think there are better ones.
But fundamentally, I'm objecting to your characterization that this guy was looking to legally kill someone or that it was motivated out of a desire to keep his wallet. The robber was threatening people's lives. The danger was not over. Shooting the robber was a reasonable choice given what the shooter knew at the time.
Or look at it another way. What if the guy being robbed missed, then robber shoots him and all around him. Which would not have happened if the wallets were just given. It's always better to de-escalate.
Yes, the "he had it coming" "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" argument.
America has this weird contradiction of being a place where anyone can get rich, be great, etc. But on the other hand, a criminal is irredeemable, can't change, will never get better, will get theirs tomorrow if not today.
In some European countries there's a recent trend to attack people perceived as "the state", such as firefighters and paramedics in certain situations. Afaik, this is usually done by low income, uneducated people that good stone grudge and then lash out. You can indeed be happy that they don't have access to firearms.
This is not done by “low income, uneducated people". This is done by 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants from the middle east and africa.
Please be specific, otherwise these problems will never be resolved.
I come from a low income neighborhood but native parents, this was unheard of up until the 2000s.
To be specific - Poland. We don't have enough immigrants from middle east and africa for this to be noticeable problem. It's mostly uneducated drunk idiots who target ER teams. Firefighters - I didn't heard about them being targeted yet.
Edit: I don't say that MENA immigrants targeting public services is not an issue. I say that this issue exists globally too, it's a result of having a lot of uneducated demoralised people, whatever their background or origin.
>It's mostly uneducated drunk idiots who target ER teams.
It's the aftershocks of all the coronavirus/antivaxx conspiracy theories. The people who got brainwashed hard attack doctors/ER teams because they see them as murderers.
First five UK-based examples I found via Google were three white men and two white women attacking paramedics. One used a meat cleaver. (All found with the search "attack on paramedic sentenced <random city>")
(Edit: full disclosure - one more search and the sixth had a common Turkish surname (no mugshot)).
First, the UK is a special case. I’m working right now in Liverpool and it is the most dysfunctional city I’ve been to in Europe. I’ve worked in most of Europe.
Second, the nationality of the perpetrators is often masked in case it is a foreigner.
Third, a random Google search isn’t exactly representative.
Obviously native Europeans have attacked police, medics etc.
But organized mobs attacking firefighters, paramedics etc is a new phenomenon.
So that's Poland and the UK that are special cases so far.
> Second, the nationality of the perpetrators is often masked in case it is a foreigner.
Ah, well, if we're going by nationality, I'm 6 for 6 - that last bloke with a Turkish surname was an ex-policeman, so I reckon he was probably a British national.
I think the random Google search is one up on a random internet denizen's unsourced opinion, to be honest. I kicked the tyres of your opinion with the most basic, cursory test and it came up short.
I agree with the principle that we need to stop flinching away from stating this kind of thing, but am unsure if it's actually true that it's ME and Africa for this specific type of antisocial behavior.
Checking out the "offences by outcome" uk gov spreadsheet[1] is a bit of a wash. Africans aren't any more overrepresented than they are for violent crime in general (less, in fact) and Middle Easterners seem to be lurking in the giant bag of "Not Stated" ethnicity. Though at least for assault of emergency workers in general (as opposed to predictable group attacks on entering an area) "White British" are still (barely) the majority.
Every time that medical staff is assaulted in Portugal, specially when the code word "family" is used, we already know it was done by a Gypsy group or family who couldn't be bothered to wait in queue to be looked at.
The other "low income, uneducated people" never do such things, always the same group.
> I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals.
Come on, this is totally untrue. I grew up in rural Ireland and it's very common for farmers to own guns. Hunters too.
Check here [•] - Finland, for example, is only a couple of percentage points behind the US in number of households that own a gun (42% vs 37%).
The difference is in the culture, not gun ownership. In Finland, Ireland, and every single developed country in the world (and most developing countries too) except for the US, privately owned guns are for hunting or for killing pests, not for threatening humans. That's the difference.
At least Finland's stats are a bit misleading. They are using number of guns per capita, not number of households with guns (and might also be using number of permits instead of number of guns, same gun might have more than 1 permit). There's about 650 000 permit holders in Finland, i.e. about 12%. Of course there are some people who have access to illegal guns but I don't think that's very high number. Estimates I see for number of illegal guns (which include deactivated guns which can be reactivated) are from 35 000 to 200 000.
I think it's mostly a numbers thing. Willing to bet that most people take owning a gun seriously, but there's a loooooooooot of guns in the US. There's enough in US circulation alone to give a gun to every citizen of the US, Canada, and the UK. That much floating around and there's bound to be some dumb fuck in the news waving around their new bang stick.
Like others have said, you've got a lot of other things in the US to worry about than guns. However, since we're sharing gun incidents, mine is that I had a sheriff's deputy LARPing as a SWAT officer bust in to the bathroom at work and point a rifle at me while I was trying to use the urinal. Lots of yelling until they realized that I was not a part of the drill and had my pants unzipped. Not happy that they didn't inform us that the cops were going to use the building we're in for school shooting training. Dangers of working in a repurposed school I guess?
In Europe, it is not literally true that "...nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals..."; but it is true that owning pistols and AR-15s is relatively rare in Europe. My understanding is that the only country with a well-established concealed carry community is Czechia.
In germany, you can own a gun for sport or hunting. However, you are not legally allowed to carry it with you, except when going to and from that activity. It's also not a "walk into a store and buy one" situation, but if you want a gun, you can certainly still get one.
What are you talking about? What country in EU ?
Because for example here in CZ, there's a lot of firearms. But guess what, you must pay for a gun license and have a doctor examination with possibility of psych. evaluation, then a gun license exam is really hard also practice test of gun handling and shooting is pretty hard and not cheap.
So you will think twice to get it and you really don't want to loose it.
Basically turning gun owners into the most law abiding citizens there is.
If you're talking about countries like UK or similar, where you can't legally defend against attackers and biggest cities are controlled by gangs with kitchen knives and acid bottles. Even police don't have guns and can't arrest them, cuz racism or something.
GG EZ.
> where you can't legally defend against attackers and biggest cities are controlled by gangs
Good grief, where do you get your information?
* In the UK, it's perfectly legal to defend yourself ("reasonable force").
* Beat policemen don't carry guns; firearms officers do. Any policeman can arrest anyone they suspect of an offence.
* Drug dealers rob one another; it's a direct result of prohibition. If you rob a drug dealer, he isn't going to report it to the police. That's nothing special to the UK (or to big cities).
Actually, they had brand new broadband! My area was in a "rural fibre zone" and while I was there the local houses (including mine) went from satellite-only or tethering (which could be OK, sometimes, barely) or 1 Mbit DSL to 1Gbps fibre. It was pretty awesome.
So the theory is that they'll roll it out to 569,000 premises which are considered unlikely to be connected to fibre via the commercial providers; it's fairly extensive. In principle, it should go virtually everywhere that the commercial providers don't. We'll see how it works out in practice, of course. They're at about 150k premises 'passed' (ie they can be connected on demand); of these 45k are actually connected.
EDIT: Actually, from context they may be talking about a prior rollout. But the idea's the same.
Yeah, this was OpenEir (which is now just Eir’s standard commercial offering, though I think the rural buildout was subsidised). I was thinking of NBI, a separate network which is supposed to fill in what OpenEir didn’t.
Meanwhile I’m on coax; that’s the price you pay to live in the city center. (For whatever reason, Dublin city center tends to be behind on this stuff; my old apartment, beside Trinity, didn’t even get _VDSL_ until 2016 or so).
In the end, the Irish government decided to bankroll the rollout of fiber to "commercially unviable" areas (under the guide of a National Broadband Scheme). That prompted one of the unsuccessful telcos to suddenly find ~ 300k of those homes commercially viable!
Trying to understand why some properties have been hooked up and others not is a fruitless exercise. During the COVID lockdown, I discovered that most churches (which had a strong interest in broadcasting masses to their congregations) has either been deemed commercially unviable or not indexed at all. Many hoops were jumped through.
> I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism
Well, in US so many times heavily armed police act like chump in face of serious criminals so not sure that general populace are proud of professionalism.
The trick here is that US police are absurdly unprofessional in nearly any way. With guns it's even worse, as a mythical "good cop" with a gun gets only a single magazine a year through work to maintain proficiency, and depending on the state requirements, might not even have regular testing of their shooting abilities. Police in the US regularly shoot things that weren't even close to their target, and their standard training is to just keep shooting until they need to reload, whether or not it really makes sense. They are also taught that everything and everyone wants to murder them, and they should shoot first, and that their life is more important than justice, and other things that make them so paranoid they think it's normal to always face the door at a restaurant like my anxiety crippled girlfriend.
Meanwhile plenty of them are in right wing militias.
There's plenty of non-decent folk in Europe as well. I think the main difference is that it's much less common to fetishize guns, make them part of your everyday life, and belive that you need them to defend your life. Because that belief is the first step towards shooting a guy who disconnects your cable TV because you didn't pay your bills.
It's a lot easier to not shoot someone or get into violent crime in general when you have the option of just taking government assistance and trying to better yourself.
In the US, because of obscene paperwork and often actively hostile to poverty policies, it might be easier to just join a gang to survive.
America has been at war for around 225 years. Most of which has been fought outside of America. We just like shooting freedom bullets on other people's land, and when we run out of problems we shoot freedom bullets at each other.
If your thesis is that America should not have entered the world wars because of reasons other than it would've saved American lives to avoid them, I'd love to hear it.
No, the thesis is that coming to Europe in defense of soverign nations does not in any way excuse american domestic policy choices that result in people being worse off.
Just like sending aid to Ukraine does not in any way excuse the US of invading a sovereign country in the middle east for fake reasons and then attempting colonialism for 20 years under the guise of "bringing democracy"
This comment is incredibly manipulative and dishonest.
> I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people.
Nothing about the parent comment implies otherwise. You're intentionally making up points that nobody made in order to push your agenda.
> I'm really a bit surprised to hear this.
...and you're not really surprised - this is just another use of emotionally manipulative language.
I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people.
The rule of thumb is you are still way more likely to be killed by other things before being killed with a firearm. It’s not really that bad. Once you graduate from school your risk of being shot dead dramatically lowers and other normal causes of death take the top spot.
Yep . . . just as I thought. Your source uses ages 0-19 as "children and adolescents." Guess what happens when you lump in those extra two years of 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds, who are legal adults?
You also lump in a disproportionate amount of street gang-related shootings, which have different causes and different solutions, and make it look like suburban teens are uniquely at risk from firearms . . . when they're not. The vast majority of firearm homicides in this country are suicides, and the next-most involve street gangs and the drug trade, and involve young men with criminal records killing other young men with criminal records using illegally-obtained pistols.
That doesn't mean the death rate of children due to firearms is high, it could just mean there isn't really anything else that kills children i.e. they mostly have parents looking out for them, don't have to work dangerous jobs, and haven't lived long enough for lifestyle factors to take effect yet.
I'm a gun owner and I believe in the rights of citizens to be armed, but I'm still not sure this is a good argument. On principle, anything that causes unnecessary deaths should be curtailed unless the benefits somehow outweigh the damage. We still have people driving cars who kill each other every day by accident, but there's a general feeling that it would be better to do away with that if we could find a way to eliminate private transportation without destroying our economy in the process. To make a strong argument for firearms ownership requires not just downplaying the harm but actually explaining why the public good of an armed populace outweighs the many and obvious evils it inflicts on innocent people. That's a much tougher case to make to someone who's lost a family member to gun violence, but nonetheless it's a case that needs to be made (in my opinion) if we're going to remain an unruly bunch who won't be led down the road to either a right-wing or left-wing police state.
[edit: Just to clarify, I think there's an equally strong argument to be made about freedom of movement as a societal benefit, and an individual right, that outweighs the harms caused by humans driving their own cars.]
I think you’re missing the nuance here. If I can protect myself using a weapon, I don’t need to vote for mass surveillance to protect me. The ability to engage in shootouts with the police isn’t what prevents the formation of a police state. The problem with a police state is that state violence becomes a way to exercise political power.
Precisely. Policing in any country is always a mix of public service and protection racket. A police monopoly on protecting people from other people, or society from itself, leaves no safety for anyone.
It's ironic that some of the most vociferously anti-gun people in the US are also the ones with the clearest view of the police as an armed gang. But absent armed police and without the right to protect themselves, what do they think will fill the vacuum?
People don't agree on whether there is a positive or negative correlation between security and safety; whether increased security makes the society more or less safe. Some people also think that everyone interested in security (including the police, the military, and people buying guns for self defense) is inherently suspicious.
Trust makes the society safe. When there is a lack of trust, careful security measures can be used to compensate. But security can also lead to an arms race that makes everyone less safe, as measures that improve someone's safety may have a negative effect on others.
> But security can also lead to an arms race that makes everyone less safe, as measures that improve someone's safety may have a negative effect on others.
The stoic natural rights theory on which the US is founded definitely tips the balance towards self-defense over the collective. It’s the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
The hard part is stopping the self-defense at armed individuals. And not escalating from armed individuals to armed gangs. From armed gangs to criminal organizations capable of challenging the state. From criminal organizations to regional warlords replacing the state. And from regional warlords to conquerors establishing a new state.
Since 1900, if a movement used violence in their methods for change they had a success rate of 25%; movements with non-violence had success 40% of the time. Further, most movements who did use violence to have a 'change of government' were much more likely to end up with authoritative government.
Other than the obvious confounding factors, I feel this has to have some cherry picking or selective interpretation of what is a non-violent movement. Almost always there's some non-violent action preceding a violent movement, the question is at which stage they get quashed, fail to become much bigger, and then people have to resort to violence.
The recent surge in violence as DAs have stopped fully prosecuting criminals -- including those who commit violent gun crimes -- has blurred the line between criminal violence and state violence. That renews the argument for self defense.
In other words, as the state declines to protect you, you have a better claim on the natural right to protect yourself.
I think the issue is that it's such an easy web-search, your failure to do it and instead make a "simple request" appears to present an implication that the phenomenon in question doesn't exist, i.e. gaslighting.
The assertion for which you asked evidence is not a correlation between prosecutorial policy ("fully prosecuting criminals") and crime rates, but rather the existence of the policies themselves. So, there's no need for a "study": the prosecutors put it down in writing (and those policies then get reported by the media).
For the record, I support some of these prosecutorial reform efforts, but through legislation which eliminates things like "add-on charges", not by prosecutors selectively deciding who will and won't get them.
But, since you asked, here's just a few -- and I'll make the "simple request" to you to do the "hard work" of a web-search if you want more than these: try Chesa Boudin, Larry Krasner, etc.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg announces he is directing his staff either not to prosecute, accept "community diversion" in lieu of prosecution, or at least not to seek any jail time, for a slew of offenses, including e.g. armed robbery:
And while anecdotal, here's evidence of the implementation of that policy, a letter from Union Pacific railroad to the DA's office, complaining that when their agents apprehend criminals robbing trains, they are not fully prosecuted:
I appreciate you taking the time to do this, explain that the existence of these policies itself is not in doubt, and clarify the difference between asking for proof of their existence versus proof of their effects on society. Because I had started to respond, but I decided it was bad for my mental state to engage further.
It sounds like you and I are actually quite close in belief that systemic reforms are necessary but that undertaking them by prosecutorial fiat is a mistake. You'd probably appreciate this analysis:
False dichotomy, corporations are another (somewhat powerful entity).
They don't tend to use direct force either, but there are private militias...defending yourself from a gang or haywire corp is also an important thing.
People like to take the big argument, defense from govt, and tear it down from a broad level, and then ignore the many other lethal threats posed. There have been a couple shootings in recent memory, where citizens quickly resolved the matter far faster than law enforcement could have hoped.
Situations too, where men armed with axes etc. went on killing sprees in other countries and mostly people were unable to respond.
I don't think everyone should bear arms, or even that it should be common, but I do think the right to defend yourself is a pretty inalieable right. If gun ownership can help with that, then by all means...
As someone who moved to the US and finds the gun culture absolutely bonkers, I get the gun culture and why they had it in the constitution.
I don’t get the obsession behind open carry though. What good is people walking around in shopping malls with large semi automatic rifles on their back?
Almost no one actually does this, and most sane gun owners think those people are attention whores at the very best, dangerous nuts at worst.
This is a phenomenon I've head described as "nutpicking." Take the absolute worst of a demographic and then go "why are you all like THAT?"
Claiming US gun culture is all about going to the mall open-carrying a semiauto rifle is on the same level as claiming gay men all prance around in assless chaps and leather. No, they don't, and it shouldn't be any mystery why claiming that is so offends people.
I'm going to plus one psunavy03's comment here. I own firearms, but they're locked in a gun safe. I pull them out every now and again, drive them to a gun range, fire them, clean them and then put them back in the safe.
And I believe this is the experience of the overwhelming majority of gun owners in the US.
It occurs to me I haven't seen any estimates for how many people open carry on a daily basis. (You would think SOMEONE would collect that data SOMEWHERE.)
The states are sort of (in)famous for how many people own firearms, but I assert the number of people who open carry on a daily (or weekly) basis is much smaller than the number of people who own firearms.
I'm going to stop short of accusing nojvek of nutpicking, but encourage them to look around. The stats I've seen are that one in three Americans owns a firearm. If you were walking around and one out of three people were open carrying... well... I think that would be a little unusual unless you were in a gun show or at a shooting range.
Gun-culture in America can be weird, but it's often portrayed as being weirder than it actually is.
[Edit: also. how did we go from cable modems to guns so quickly?]
I only mention because when I was in Texas for the first time in my life, when I entered Target for shopping in Houston area, I saw 4 men walking in with big guns strapped to their back.
I was kind of freaked out but everyone else operated as if it was normal.
I found that pretty jarring. Was only there for a few days but almost everyday I saw someone with a gun on them on the streets.
Yes my sample size is low, but it’s still a strong memory in my mind.
More to the point, none of the few nutjobs who insist on doing this has ever actually carried out a mass shooting. At least not to my knowledge. Generally, if you find yourself around someone who's carrying openly, you can be sure you're less likely to be shot than you would be just walking around a random mall by yourself.
I always thought it had more to do with a sense of personal agency than reasoned expectation of using a firearm to protect myself (or someone around me) from harm.
Firearms can, in many situations, allow you to enforce your will over that of other people who may be intent on harming you or others.
The thing I never quite understood is why so many of us believe they'll encounter those situations walking to train station in the urban core.
So in one sense, I think I can understand the thinking behind it but at the same time think people are mistaken for how often you'll need to shoot someone while walking home in the city or in the burbs.
That being said... I worked part time as an agent for a bail bondsman to pay for college and frequently carried large sums of cash with me through bad neighborhoods. I open carried with the approval of the sheriff's office and municipal police departments largely as a reminder that I could shoot back. But I never had to. The last person a potential criminal wants to shoot at is their bail bondsman... I never drew, aimed or fired my firearm in two years of working that job. In many ways I think it was like part of a "costume" that communicated I had the weight of social convention on my side.
@nojvek -- also... are you seeing people in shopping malls open carrying or are you seeing news articles on TV or online talking about people in shopping malls open carrying? Also, my personal experience is you're MUCH more likely to see someone open carrying at the feed store in the rural parts of the country than at a proper shopping mall in the urban core. (I don't have enough experience with the burbs to render an opinion.) Though there are places in the exurbs and rural America where you probably want to have a firearm to defend yourself against animals or people with foul intent.
I just watched someone do a sale of a fully loaded glock for a zip during a smoke sesh. Loaded straight into fairly skinny jeans without checking the safety. Bear in mind that handguns are by far the largest contributors to domestic gun-related homicide (intentional and unintentional) and that most gun control safety targets "assault rifles" and other scary shapes. I don't think this is a nightmare we can exit any time in the near future even in the most ideal scenario.
About ten years ago, i was buying weed from a cop (i got the hookup through his highschool friend). He bragged that every one of the ten or so AR15s on the wall in his bedroom over his gravity bong and below the bullet holes was registered to a different person. Why he thought that might have interested or impressed me is something I still try to puzzle out on late nights.
"Registered to a different person" -- for the most part, guns are not registered in the USA. Was this in a state or city with a registry for AR-15s?
"Loaded straight into fairly skinny jeans without checking the safety." -- Glocks do not have safeties.
The idea with most newer striker-fired pistols, like the Glock, is that the gun goes in a hard-sided (molded nylon or kydex) holster. If it's not in the holster, it's ready to fire. If that is not safe in the situation you are in, put it back in the holster.
Rifles, shotguns, &c, are never holstered; so if it is time to fire the weapon, you deactivate the safety; otherwise, it is left on safe. Because pistols have the extra step of being holstered, it turns out be work well in practice not to have the intermediate unholstered-but-safe step.
> "Registered to a different person" -- for the most part, guns are not registered in the USA. Was this in a state or city with a registry for AR-15s?
Handguns are registered to a tiny degree. The NICS checks records may be kept only on paper, and are kept by the gun dealer until they close business. Then the BATFE or a related govt. office gets them. By order of congress, this office is not allowed to computerize.
In some states and in some cities, handguns are registered; but in most states, they are not registered to any degree.
A registry connects a particular gun -- a particular serial number -- to a particular person. A NICS check doesn't do that -- it's a criminal background check. Just because you have a NICS check, it doesn't mean you bought any particular gun. You could pass the background check and then decide you don't want the gun after all.
You may be referring to a Form 4473 -- the DRoS (Dealer Record of Sale) -- which does record which person received which gun (with serial number) -- and all licensed dealers maintain these records, for all guns they sell (not just handguns). These records form a sort of a search tree, since the manufacturer records which wholesaler the serial number went to the, the wholesaler records the retailer and the retailer records the end user. These records are useful in regulating the traffic in arms; but the decentralized nature of them means that the government can not go on fishing expeditions -- can not just go out and query the database and see what looks interesting today.
Here's how the DRoS are used in regulating the arms trade. Say police come across a big box of guns from Colt. They can go to Colt with a suitable warrant and say, hey, where did these go to? And then go to the wholesaler, on down the tree. It turns out this information is often sufficient to localize shady gun dealers who are trying to sell to the mob, the cartels, &c.
Gifts and other private transfers, including occasional cash transfers, are still legal in most states and will be legal for the foreseeable future.
However, some states have banned private transfers of handguns or of all guns. This means, in practice, that people must perform the transfer through licensed dealers.
It is illegal in the United States to be in the firearms business without a license. It is legal for private people to transfer firearms to one another without filling out a 4473. So on the one hand, we have the business of selling guns and filling out 4473s and maintaining records according to the ATF's rules, and the majority of transfers of guns take place according to these rules; and on the other, we have people who give a gun to their son or daughter as a birthday present, or sell a few guns they no longer use. In the middle, we have a grey area -- people who sell a few guns every year, &c. Occasionally, people in the grey area get caught; and it's not a good place to be in; so people who occasionally sell guns but have no interest in being in the firearms business will actually transfer through a licensed dealer (the seller transfers to the dealer, who then transfers to the buyer, charging a nominal fee). For example, when people sell guns on GunBroker.com, they almost always intermediate the transaction through a licensed dealer.
This is what people are talking about when they say "universal background checks" and "the gun show loophole". Now, "the gun show loophole" seems like a completely ridiculous idea. I do not see how progressives can believe it exists; and I do not see how this could possibly occur with any frequency. The ATF knows where the gun shows are. Maybe progressives think the ATF is not going to the gun shows looking for people selling guns without a license? I don't think anyone who knows anything about selling guns believes for one moment that the best place to sell guns illegally is a place, like a gun show, that is literally crawling with cops from agencies at all levels of government (not only to keep an eye on things but also as customers).
I'm less concerned about any tracking (Being paper records, the 4473 is effectively meaningless as a tracking facility) from the 4473 and more concerned about a background check - I'd be perfectly fine for eliminating person to person transfers between individuals without a state license (CPL/CCW, FOID, etc).
Though one of the gripes with NICS is as far as I know it does not fail safe, if a local LE or reporting agency ignores the request or does not process it in a timely manner, the person may get a false pass.
I'm not sure what people hope to accomplish, by "...eliminating person to person transfers between individuals without a state license (CPL/CCW, FOID, etc)." and similar policies. It would cut down on the number of person-to-person transfers, but so what? Person-to-person transfers are not a problem in this country -- they don't contribute to anything bad. Many mass shooters actually buy their guns from licensed dealers; many of them commit their attack as their first and last crime, so they have no background to check. Stolen guns are a significant problem, particularly handguns; but stolen guns obviously have no record of their transfer to the criminal.
Regarding NICS, it is supposed to instant -- National Instant Check System -- and it is generally quite fast. The issue is not with an agency ignoring the request but rather with agencies not forwarding the data they are supposed to forward. If it's not in the database when the check is run, the check comes back clean -- most NICS checks complete in a few minutes.
If for some reason a NICS check does not complete in two or three days or something like that, yes, it defaults to open and the person gets their gun. That is how it should be. There must never be a possibility for the government to prevent the trade in arms, either for particular people or for the whole country, simply by delaying things without explanation. Process delays are one of many tools governments abuse. If the data is not in the database, another 2 days is probably not going to get it there. Something has to be done about the agencies that don't forward their data, yes; but opening up an avenue for sideways stuff on the part of the government is not the solution.
In the United States, it is illegal to transfer a firearm to a felon (and probably to all other categories of person who would be denied by NICS) -- this is another reason, one I didn't mention, that most sales brokered by GunBroker go through a licensed dealer. A licensed dealer has access to NICS. A regular person doesn't. If they do a private party transfer and, lo and behold, the person they transfer to is a felon, they are in big trouble. They would rather not be in trouble so they delegate to the dealer to handle the transfer.
Dealers maintain none-paper records, too -- as do manufacturers. They have DRoS systems which are electronic. This makes it easy for them to provide data to the ATF when a suitable warrant is presented. What prevents the data from being a resource for government fishing expeditions? It's two things:
* The ATF is formally forbidden from centralizing the data in a big data warehouse -- it is technically against the law to maintain a federal gun registry.
* It is legal to transfer guns, albeit only in special circumstances, outside the system.
These two things together prevent the available information being used for a fishing expedition. Firstly, the government is not allowed to assemble the data; and secondly, the available data is imperfect -- it is not proof that a particular person owns a particular gun or even any guns.
The way this data works, it's not a big problem for combatting the illegal traffic in arms. A large part of that is identifying where, exactly, the arms exited the formal arms business and entered the black market. The data is perfectly suitable for that.
The data can't be used to show that this or that person definitely has this or that gun; and it can't be used to show which people have which guns, or how many people have more than ten, or anything like that. That is a good thing. Those are guns held by private citizens; they are private people, it's their private business.
Gun registries are not of much use for solving crimes related to guns. Criminals don't use leave behind guns that can be traced to them; and if a criminal is apprehended with a gun that may have been used in a crime, the gun has to be tied to the crime through physical evidence -- powder residue and stuff like that. It's not like there's some serial number at the scene of the crime that can be used to find the gun somehow!
Do you care more about mass shootings or average day to day gun crime?
They have different sources (one, poor access to mental healthcare, the other, poverty) and probably need different solutions too. I personally dont care as much about mass shootings, because in the grand scheme of gun crimes, lots less die. Nevermind Suicide, which is just access to mental healthcare.
I'm really interested in making poor communities safer, and reducing the transactions in illegal guns - but tbh, thats like trying to bail out a rowboat with a thimble - and without dealing with the underlying causes of gun crime folks debating in this space are effectively arguing about what color a building ought to be, while its also actively on fire.
In the end, I think everyone who buys a gun should have to go thru the same process, and should undergo a background check, and that a fail dangerous system is bad - now how we go about fixing that issue? thats another question entirely.
I'm not sure how you think the remedy you're proposing -- "I think everyone who buys a gun should have to go thru the same process, and should undergo a background check, and that a fail dangerous system is bad" -- is actually connected to the problem you're trying to solve. Most of the supply of guns used in crime is stolen guns -- it's not guns purchased legally from private people.
Private people, although they have the right to do so, don't generally transfer guns directly to strangers, because of the possibility of criminal prosecution for transfer to a prohibited person.
There are some improvements we can make to NICS -- but they all have to do with making sure the data is actually there.
Keep in mind that, in the absence of data indicating a conviction, a person is just going to get cleared in a few minutes. NICS checks basically never take even an hour, let alone a day; the time limit of three days is there to prevent the relevant agencies from engaging in malicious delays.
You have to have time limits like that for most government procedures; and we can't presume, in the absence of evidence, that someone should be denied. You are suggesting we give up something fundamental and general -- the presumption of innocence -- when you argue that NICS should default to closed.
My nightly bedside weapon is a Beretta 92 with the safety decocker. I know a lot of people think it's silly to have a safety on that gun, but I want to be awake enough to think about it twice if I wake up in the middle of the night.
I'm not sure about AR15s, but the serial number on the slide of a handgun is associated at (legal, storefront) purchase with a name and (I think) address. I presumed that was what was implied as registration. I assumed this was true for some part of the AR15 (maybe the receiver?) but I don't actually know for sure.
There are loopholes, but there are reasons to prefer a gun that was last purchased under someone else's name, ideally someone you don't know at all.
Regardless, the thing I found interesting was the COP's perception of the value of the guns.
This is the form 4473 -- the dealer has a record of all sales that they've made. However, you could certainly sell the gun to someone else, through a different dealer. That doesn't make the old 4473 invalid -- it records a sale that actually occurred -- but it does mean the 4473s are not functionally a registry.
It is probably better to say that Glocks have no safety. This is actually quite safe in practice because pistols are holstered in common use -- this makes them very different from rifles, shotguns, &c. With a pistol safety, there is an intermediate, "unholstered-but-on-safe" state that doesn't exist with rifles. This turns out to be dangerous in practice because people can think the pistol is on safe when it isn't; or think it is ready to fire when they need it to and, lo and behold, it's not. It turns out to be safer in practice to just assume the gun is shootable when it's out of the holster -- and if that's not safe enough for the situation you're in, put it back in the holster!
Glocks have a system that is systems called "safe action" where there is a system of internal locks that prevents the weapon from firing in situations where the gun is dropped, hit by a car, struck from the side, &c -- this is not really what most people are thinking of when they think of a safety. It turns out to be very important in practice, though. If a police car gets hit by another car and the guns go off that's going to be a bad day for everyone.
>This turns out to be dangerous in practice because people can think the pistol is on safe when it isn't
One of the golden rules of gun safety is to not point a gun at something you do not intend to kill (the rule usually uses "destroy" because gun culture loves playing down the danger of guns) so if this is actually an issue then responsible gun owners are not as common as they should be.
What do you think "actually an issue" means in this context?
For the most part, the development of striker fired pistols and duty holsters was driven by police and military use; these are contexts where a person draws a pistol several times a day (on some days) and hundreds or thousands of times a year. General process safety concerns -- like reducing the number of "safe" states that people have to think about -- do matter in that context.
There were some cases of officers shooting through the floor of their cruiser because the seatbelt tang somehow could get inside one brand of holster and pull the trigger.
It does seem like the right balance hasn't been found yet.
Which brand? What is the "tang" of a seatbelt? It us hard for me to imagine a seatbelt buckle actually getting into a holster, but I would like to learn more about this.
When I read about it, I couldn't understand it either. They didn't explain precisely, but IIRC, it was a pistol with a tactical light, which explains why there might be more space that usual. I couldn't find the particular incident, however.
This sort of thing is unfortunately somewhat common:
The sig p320 thing isn't about safeties at all but a mechanical design flaw that the company has remedied with a recall. And that safariland link just seems like safariland is a terrible manufacturer of holsters.
If this is the one I’m thinking of it was pretty clear that there was a police department that was incompetent and blaming negligent discharges on the firearm instead of on true officers.
>What, so [pulling] the trigger automatically disengages the safety?
Correct. There's a few other internal safeties to help ensure it doesn't go off unless someone is pulling the trigger and (hopefully) intending to fire.
It's still drop safe and not going to go off by itself, but if you fire it (and there's a round in the chamber), it's going off.
>As a non-gun-person that seems like an insane design decision
There's certainly tradeoffs. It's simpler and you're not going to accidentally forget to disengage a safety at the worst possible time (when you actually need to be using a gun), but it does increase the risk when improperly handling the firearm which is a risk not everyone is cool with for obvious reasons (and even experienced operators (incl. Law Enforcement being generous, which largely carry Glocks) are human and can make mistakes).
But (as I learned only recently) there are guns around with actually no "proper" safety and one model at least is particularly prone to fire accidentally:
Yeah that one has been rather concerning. In theory you follow all the firearm safety rules (especially watching where you're pointing) and
if something goes haywire things turn out relatively fine, but I certainly wouldn't be comfortable using one personally.
A lot of the issues in general seem to come about around holstering which is one of the situations where you're most likely to be "breaking" the rules pointing towards yourself, certainly not ideal.
Reholstering is one of the stronger objective arguments for a safety, but that still assumes the safeties themselves are properly designed.
>That's much better than the opposite problem: forgetting to engage the safety and accidentally discharging.
If you're following the firearm safety rules you're not pointed at anything/anybody you don't wish to destroy so it's a moot point. (yourself included, though at least in that case nobody else was harmed needlessly)
A safety lockout (or lacktherof) shouldn't be a factor in your pointing of a gun at someone and pulling the trigger.
>I just feel like having to toggle a switch before killing a man is the least you can do to avoid accidents.
It's extremely rare for someone who isn't being extremely negligent to be in a position where they could "accidently" kill someone.
Could a safety prevent such an occurrence? It's very well possible and that might be a reason to prefer a firearm with sufficient safeties that increases your comfort.
On the other hand some people decided that they're cautious enough and by in large most people avoid accidents and practice good safety practices to avoid harm should one happen.
There's trade offs either way, but ultimately it's preference.
>On the other hand some people decided that they're cautious enough and by in large most people avoid accidents and practice good safety practices to avoid harm should one happen.
ok, so the group "most people using firearms" and the group "most people using websites" do not significantly overlap is what I'm hearing?
I'm aware of firearm safety rules and all that. That's not my problem with this. My problem is that the safety on a firearm is part of a defense-in-depth type situation. Removing the safety switch removes a layer of that defense. I hope I don't need to explain why that's a bad thing on this forum.
There’s also the “if you ever pull the trigger in a situation where the safety keeps it from firing, you are doing something horribly wrong”. People often treat the safety as a “gun off” switch when it should never be considered that. I understand the Glock philosophy - no gun is “safe” until you’ve personally verified that there is no ammunition in it at all, and even then it should be treated as if it is loaded.
Relying on a safety to keep it “safe” is usually the first step in ventilation of the floor or ceiling.
I invite you to re-read my previous comment and meditate some on what "defense in depth" means. Of course you're not supposed to rely on the safety, but that doesn't mean it should be removed. The entire point of defense in depth is to construct things in such a manner where a single mistake is not enough to cause trouble.
It depends on what the purpose of the firearm is for.
Play-guns for the shooting range? Sure, add fifty safeties if you want.
But guns are used for other purposes, and there is a failure mode where the person holding the weapon intended to fire and end someone's life and the gun fails to do so because the safety was still engaged.
Many things are purposely designed "fail-safe" but some things are designed to "fail deadly" for very good reasons.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the negligent discharges that can be categorized as "I thought the safety was on and was pulling the trigger like a moron" is much higher than "I knew the gun only had a grip/trigger safety and was pulling the trigger like a moron".
It isn't that simple. Most handguns actually have lots of "safeties" meant to ensure that it only goes off when held/pointed and the trigger is pulled. Triggers are also not like controller buttons. They generally require significant force to actually pull. No modern handgun should fire if shaken or dropped. Even guns from 100+ year ago (Colt 1911) have redundant safety features to protect against mishandling.
With a modern holster there is no need for an additional safety. Keep gun in holster, holster protects trigger. If you really need a gun and be ready to fire and only then: get gun out of holster.
When I worked at an ISP in the 90s the amount of threats and verbal abuse from customers was wild.
One guy who ran a event ticket operation (selling tickets to events) we installed a T1 for the phone company wouldn't go out unless they could bring a security guard. The same guy once came to our office and waited outside in the parking lot and followed one of my coworkers home demanding that she fix his internet. Her father came out and confronted him and he took off.
Another time someone was mad that his address didn't qualify for DSL because "the man was keeping him down from getting fast internet".
Later in life I worked at the phone company and linemen told me stories about being high on a pole in rough neighborhoods and being accosted by folks on the ground brandishing pistols demanding to know whose phone line they were tapping (they tried to explain that stuff is done remotely but they didn't understand).
I guess it really did depend on the mood and demeanor of whatever technician got sent out on a given day.
Back in those same years, it was a painful, nonstop pendulum swing every month-or-two, between a) cripplingly unusable internet, and b) working Internet but with absolutely every channel unlocked for free.
Everytime something happened that required a technician to come out while it was in state "b", it always triggered a stern talking to to teenage-me from a tech and them putting the filter back on and ruining the Internet again until finally the next time another tech presumably couldn't fix it without again removing the filter. I frequently had successive visits that left me stranded in state "a".
The phrase "free market" comes from Adam Smith who used it to describe "markets free from rent-seeking behaviour." So careful there, free markets may not be what you think either.
> Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market.
They tried non-monopoly power and wireline phone markets in their early history and they didn't work.
A lot of times a company would go bankrupt, but their wires would be on the poles and would degrade to the point of falling apart and dangling, which would then make contact with a live wire and folks would get electrocuted when they touched it.
In fairness, this would be in the times before common usage. Also, this totally happens in the current state too as major companies buy the little guys up and then do little to actually care for the lines.
Or really the lack of a small in-line filter. Nobody at the head end knows if a house is getting more channels than they paid for until an audit years later turns up a discrepancy. At that point you don't really know if it was the homeowner doing it or a mistake by a technician so all you can do is install the filter and watch that house for convenient mistakes from that point on.
A very long time ago I had internet (but not cable tv service) with Comcast. It was generally mediocre reliability, but it's the only option we had. At some point, the service just up and went out entirely.
For approximately two months, we had absolutely zero internet service, while Comcast continued to collect our monthly fees. We kept calling, and they kept sending out tech after tech. I don't recall what the final tech fixed, but they complained that all of the previous techs should have spotted the issue. We never got reimbursed for those two months of non-service, but we did magically start getting cable tv after the final tech visit. We figured it was their gesture of kindness for the Comcast hell we'd been through.
In 2006 we lived at the end of a wooded street and the lineman told me squirrels would run along the elevated cables and after a couple years they would nick the insulation sufficiently for water to seep in and then suddenly the whole neighborhood would lose IP dialtone for several months while they replaced the cables.
Sometime around 2015, Comcast seemed to get better. I was able to get dual-stack v4/v6 to the house and bandwidth exceeded advertised rates. When I returned their cable modem after buying my own, returning it was zero-drama / no paperwork problems. Also... in 2015, if you got dual-stack, your support calls were handled by a group with better hold times and generally knew more about what was really going on (rather than reading off a script.)
My last experience with Lumen was pretty horrific. Worse than any problems I ever had with Comcast (including the time we didn't have internet service for 3 months.)
It's very strange to hear myself say this, but I now have a generally positive opinion of Comcast.
Only about 1 out of 5 techs actually have any idea what they are doing at these cable internet providers. It's great because the company doesn't actually care whether the techs do their job or not because they will bill regardless, and as long as you are waiting for a tech to come fix your service, you aren't taking them to court to get it actually fixed.
What the fuck are you going to do about it? Spectrum's ancestor agreed to not offer service in this county so go ahead and switch back to dialup you worthless maggot.
I feel you about getting zapped. I visited Catalonia for a month in 2008, and I was trying to help improve OTA reception on my fiancée's TV. She had a roof antenna installed.
Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?) and I received several non-damaging but definitely "means business" shocks whilst trying to manipulate the cables.
> Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?)
A normal rooftop antenna is not energized. However, if that's in a house, there likely is a power amplifier placed in the line (or, for more fancy setups, a powered splitter box) to make sure every antenna socket can have a TV plugged in without compromising signal integrity.
I'm not questioning the veracity of your comment, but given the number of comments here (from e.g. non-Americans) expressing surprise or disgust at the seeming frequent and cavalier use of firearms, I think it should be pointed out that it is missing some details that are highly relevant.
1. Pointing a firearm, AR-15 or otherwise, at the cable guy (or anyone else) in a threatening way is a felony in all 50 states, just like in Europe and elsewhere. Using threat of force to prevent a person from leaving is an additional felony (kidnapping) in all 50 states, just like in Europe. I assume you called the police as soon as you got out of there and the perpetrator went to prison for many years? You left that part out, and it's important to stress because non-Americans seem to be getting an erroneous or exaggerated perception of everyday life in the USA.
2. A nitpick, but the firearm in question likely wasn't an AR-15 as "around then" was midway through the valid time frame of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban [1] and while a limited number of pre-ban AR-15s were grandfathered in, they were rare and very expensive. The floodgates opened after its sunset in 2004, after which they became very popular, unlike before the ban.
3. "Pulling a gun on" the cable guy, or shooting the cable guy and "leaving to die up a pole," like all murders, is a felony in all 50 states. You made the right decision to leave such a dangerous job, I feel awful for all your colleagues, and I do hope that the perpetrators did a long time behind bars.
4. Fortunately, that spate of violence seems to have been localized in both space and time: to the best of my knowledge, while such incidents do occur, they're rare. I don't work in the industry, I know several people who do (for many years), and they've told me that they've never had anything like that happen, the main problem they encounter is peoples' hostile dogs in the yard/house. A web search turns up a few incidents, but not many considering how many cable installations take place in America each year. Also, keep in mind that it goes both ways: sometimes the cable guy attacks the customer (and there's no need for a gun, e.g. [2]).
5. "People's shitty TVs backfeeding electricity into the cable line" My guess is, it's not shitty TVs, but rather faulty wiring in the user's house (ground loop, etc.). Anyone who's performed with enough PA systems has had the experience of grabbing the mic and getting a 110 VAC shock.
I thought this might be fiction because the amount of time for pirating cable seemed crazy.. However [1] there are indeed up to 6 month penalties for stealing cable. That's just ludicrous. How could copyright theft ever be anything other than a civil action? Jail time for stealing cable, that's just insane. Nobody gets hurt from stolen cable.
We really need to look long and hard at what we allow jail time for. Jail time in service of big media corporations seems just insane.
I was thinking about this. It is crazy that a private company gets to deputize the state legal apparatus to enable their business model. They want to be able to sell something that is very difficult to restrict access to, so they use the legal system to make sure it stays restricted.
They want to be able to install a cable all the way to someone’s house, and then have the state prosecute them if they dare touch it.
> It is crazy that a private company gets to deputize the state legal apparatus to enable their business model.
One could argue this is a major purpose of the state. When you can't deputize the state to resolve disputes, you get gang violence (see the drugs trade for more examples than you can count)
Right. Its using a service without paying for it which is theft if proven that it was done intentionally. Not sure how copyright was brought into this conversation.
No, it can't be theft unless the service provider lost the channel being "stolen" to the "thief" which makes no sense. Things quickly become silly when we insist on using the wrong concept where it doesn't apply.
Charges like disrupting business operations or unauthorized access I can see, but theft? nah.
Right, but nobody takes anything, the sticking point is the copyrighted content.
Unless someone tries claim you are stealing electric current, this claim of theft is absurd - first you must attach a device to the cable, then spend your time watching said device (presuming it has a screen). Until that happens, it belies belief that you have "taken" anything. After that point, one must assume somehow this is content enriching your life somehow (dubious), or that you are recording and reselling content (which would be obvious fraud, at the copyright level).
Before then, the fact is that another entity is blasting all content continuously on all their lines. That's not theft.
I'm not arguing that people should be intentionally jacking into other people's wires, or saying cable should be free for everyone, just that the legal definition of theft here is absurd. That you can then be prosecuted for something you have not done by no fault of your own except malpratice of the people involved in originally laying the lines, is ridiculous and a sure sign if cronyism and protectionism, not one of a healthy judicial system.
You could make that argument about almost any criminal statute where the victim is a corporation of some sort. Another way to describe it is "private company gets a mechanism to deter people from taking the value they create without paying for it."
Not all the value going over those lines is created by the cable company.
In fact, very little of it is, and it can only exist on the vast majority of its path with taxpayer support.
So what? They still have fixed and variable costs for delivering their product. You don’t get to take it for free just because some other entity creates the content they deliver.
I don’t see what that has to do with what the previous commenter said about the cable companies not creating “all the value” going over their lines.
In any case, in the United States, theft of service is generally treated as a criminal matter. I don’t see why this should be treated any differently, or how it would be fair to single cable companies out for exclusion from protection for having their service taken for free. Inn Keepers, other utility companies, and many other businesses enjoy the same or similar protections for their services.
"Theft" doesn't just mean "physically taking something away from someone else, who now no longer has it". As much as you might like it to mean that, that's not what the law says.
On top of that, it takes equipment, hardware, personnel, infrastructure, power to deliver cable. The OP literally has no idea what they are talking about, and could use the same logic for electricity theft.
Electricity theft does extract a resource from the grid (electricity provider needs to supply the energy you're using on the other end). Similarly, phreaking uses phone lines which is a finite resource too (and phone company would rather keep those available for paying customers).
Cable on the other hand runs all channels to your household in the first place. By removing the filter, you aren't creating any additional load on the cable network or using any additional resources for free.
Just because the harm caused by an individual action is tiny doesn't necessarily mean that thing should be legal.
For example I have a small amount of engine oil that needs disposal. I could dump it in the drainage ditch in front of my house and probably the only measurable harm it might cause would be to weeds that are growing in the ditch. By time it got to where oil could harm anything valuable it would be so diluted that it would not cause any detectable harm.
Yet doing so is illegal. It needs to be illegal because if a large number of people did it there would be measurable harm even though the harm from any one of the individuals would not be measurable.
With any kind of theft of services you need to look at not just the direct harm an individual might cause to the service provider (which may be immeasurably small) but also the harm to the service provider and to the people who are paying for the service if theft of services were widespread.
To give an extreme example if I am the only customer in my town who is actually paying for service with everyone else committing theft of services to get that service the service provider is likely to either withdraw from the market or raise rates significantly, either of which harms me.
Of course it would never actually get that extreme, but if even a few percent of people are doing it the service provider will probably start spending money on technological solutions to stop that. And the costs of those technological solutions will likely be pushed onto subscribers. Those solutions may also require installing more equipment at the user end to use the service (e.g., set top boxes) that can reduce the user's privacy.
And I don't think anyone is arguing that there shouldn't be some sort of legal action against cable stealing. My initial comment is really focused on the fact that it involves jail time.
To the oil ditch example, I certainly could see something like "it's $1000 and cleanup costs". The only way I could see jail time being justified is if you routinely decided to go around spraying the neighborhood with motor oil.
But for cable, there doesn't seem like there's ever a case where an individual could warrant jail time. Fine + cable bill for the free months of cable seems like more than enough for most people and for the "serial offender" it seems like lifetime subscription would be more than enough to avoid future problems (court mandated cable would be an interesting punishment :D)
One might argue that when viewed, there is current draw, and that additional channels typically means more viewing.
But I was thinking of overall service theft, and did not think of the filter. That case is different.
This makes me think, though. I lived through this time, and adding the filter makes zero logistic sense. EG, why have anyone, who isn't paying, even connected?
Then I remembered something.
I lived in a house, where there was a shared box for 2 units. Someone had pried open the box, and removed the filters. As a result, the cable guy disconnected the wire at the pole.
This resulted in something different. Instead of a cutoff, most channels came through, just very fuzzy. And as a kid, I lived in a rural area, and we owned an antenna booster/amp, which had made signals poorer than this, crystal clear.
It seemed that leaving an uncapped end inside a box on the pole, with loads of signal, bled enough for a usable signal to get through.
So this is probably why a filter was placed. And of course, to prevent the long wire from picking up local over the air stuff too.
Many years ago the house I was living in had cable (foxtel, Australia) connected, but the residents who had paid for it had moved out and were no longer paying for it, therefore it sat as an unused plug in the wall for a good couple of years.
I got one of those old "TV cards", so you could hook up an antenna and have TV on your computer (yeah, this was before "internet" was better than TV for moving picture entertainment) and had heard about software that could decode foxtel signal.
After a lot of futzing about, and failed attempts, it started working well enough to be watchable - although most of the content was shit, it was foxtel after all.
My point being - the signal is sent through the cable either way. Whether there's a device at the end of it or not. Equipment, hardware, personnel, power was provided by me to get it working. The previous residents paid for the connection of the cable itself. The data is all sent down the pipe whether or not someone was watching it at the far end, just due to the nature of cable at the time.
I get your electricity analogy though, but I really don't know if it applies to the data being sent down the cable. I doubt it cost "faceless them" any extra as my understanding was that the cable was a shared signal by the street (or some other small-ish communal size).
A lot of older sci-fi books, eg Heinlein, had hacker types discovering some highly profitable thing, but being uninterested except it was fun to figure out. This was often to the mystification of "normal" people, who would plead for them to work the idea into profit.
Often they were tricked into making the process profitable, by being told how impossible it was.
I responded in more ontopic detail in another comment.
Would you please inform me, if you can, as to which books are you thinking of? I have read a few Heinlein novels but would like to know if I'm missing a classic in your eyes.
I can't think of specific ones, I think I've read everything he wrote.
But I just recall small exchanges, im many of his works, where Long or another character, would notice some scientist archetype come up with an idea, yet not care one wit about exploiting it.
It was all about the puzzle of discovery, and Long/etc was often amused.
I genuinely wonder what lead them to choose a word that, by definition, is so far removed from the concept being described?
If we accept how this law wants to redefine Theft, then trespassing, squatting, illegal parking, and many other violations should now be called theft too since they involve using a resource in an unauthorized way and are actually depriving others from using the resource (which does not happen with cable modems). Spamming comments should also be called theft too since they're using server resource in an unauthorized way.
But I have to submit: If discussed within the context of Theft of services in ORS 164.125, then I supposed the misuse of Theft can be excused. That said, I really don't think we as a society should humor or follow how some lobbyist or politician decide to misuses words.
Where I grew up north of Philadelphia in the 90's, the cable companies bid for municipalities and were given a monopoly -- I grew up with Lower Bucks Cablevision, for example. Since the local government got a cut, I would imagine that's why the penalties are/were harsh and criminal, as opposed to civil.
I wonder if it’s a thing where no one ever actually wrote “cable theft is a 6mo max sentence”, but rather a serious of things that seem reasonable on their own:
- Cable theft is fraud
- Fraud is a Class Z crime
- Class Z crimes have this sentencing range
its much more that theft of service is generally treated as an actual crime, and the franchise situations especially due to the costs led to them pushing for laws with real teeth instead of civil penalties that are pointless on poor people.
I once "heard a story" about a very smart white guy that was retired special forces--just to put this racial thing to bed. Anyway, this guy lived in a subdivision that did not get cable. The cable company said there were not enough subscribers to justify the expense of the construction to bring them service. So mister special forces takes it upon himself to string a cable himself, and then decided to bring cable to the rest of the subdivision. After getting caught and arrested, part of his restitution was to make a PSA with him on camera in handcuffs saying something like "stealing cable is a crime" or something to that effect.
Certainly it is a crime in Canada too, so I think the answer is no---theft of telecommunications is broadly criminalized to prevent mafia-type involvement.
This comment is deeply inappropriate. Engaging in ideological flamewar is against HN guidelines and is just plain rude to all of the HN folks who actually work in the field you're being casually dismissive of.
I don’t think the parent post was engaging in an ideological flame war. As a way to start educating yourself, I’d recommend reading about the correlation between long jail sentences and African American heritage.
What a thread. Guy randomly claiming “the racism” with literally no evidence gets upvoted, while you who know what you’re talking about try pointing out that it’s nonsense and get downvoted and flagged.
I know it’s an old guideline to not claim HN is turning into Reddit, and I used to agree with it, but at least since Reddit killed Apollo etc and drove people away a lot of them seem to have come here, so it may really be happening this time. HN was pretty good while it lasted I guess.
There was no claim of racism, there was speculation that was reasonably on topic and at least somewhat credible given the history of racial disparities in sentencing rules. Downvoting this speculation as low value is also fine since it doesn't really add any constructive value to the conversation.
The only thing here that is close to "deeply inappropriate" was the response asserting that this speculation constitutes a "flamewar" (which is not what that term means at all) rather than bothering to try to refute the speculation with any real information or data that would contribute to creating a constructive discussion.
Genuinely trying to understand your point of view. How is this potentially offensive to anyone other than the lawmaker who decides that cable theft should carry such a harsh sentence?
I don't understand how this could be construed as derogatory toward, for example, people who work at a cable company.
> completely baseless allegations of systemic racism
Pretty much all scientific literature in the last 40 years agrees that there is systemic racism throughout the legal system. Your choice not to believe it does not make most existing scientific research ‘an ideological flame war’.
In what world is "I wonder if" a "baseless allegation"? It seems to me we're still several steps away from alleging anything and you're going off half-cocked.
Copyright is a property right. It is not unreasonable for theft of property to carry the possibility of criminal charges. This is not strictly done in service of big media---if organized crime rings come in to town and do a ton of rogue hookups with impunity, then the cable company leaves and you have a cycle of degradation in the quality of life. Preventing organized crime is why it is a federal offense. Of course, the judicial system ought to utilize its authority with discretion so as not to severely punish simple petty thefts. Also note that cable theft (e.g., the physical tampering element) can damage emergency communication lines and can create dangerous electrical problems.
> Copyright is a property right. It is not unreasonable for theft of property to carry the possibility of criminal charges.
Property theft and intellectual rights theft are two very different things. If I steal your car, you are now out a car and the use of a car. If I steal a copy of your artwork, you still have that artwork and can still sell copies of that artwork. I only start impacting your bottom line if I start selling copies.
To the extent you are impacted by a copyright violation, you can be made whole with a market rate payment for the copies created and a penalty. That's what civil law is for.
Wage theft has a much bigger negative impact on people's lives yet it's basically never criminally prosecuted. So why should copyright theft ever be criminally prosecuted?
> Also note that cable theft (e.g., the physical tampering element) can damage emergency communication lines and can create dangerous electrical problems.
Fair point, though I can't see why we'd punish that more harshly than we'd punish unauthorized digging (which is typically just civil to replace damaged lines.)
No, it isn't. The hint is right there in the name. Copying does not deprive people of their property. That's why they came up with the word Infringement to use instead of Theft, because they are fundamentally different things.
It worries me that there are people now who think that information is like property and that it can be owned.
Yes, thanks, as to copyright you are correct. I believe unless chattel is involved, it is called unauthorized reproduction and duplication rather than theft.
As to the telecom aspect, it can go either way. In Canada, it is considered theft to use a telecommunications service without the rights to do so. Under USA federal criminal law, I believe it is just referred to as unauthorized reception.
As Stuart Leslie Goddard and Marco Francesco Andrea Pirroni once quipped: "What's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?" I'm sure I would be interested in illicit bittorrenting, but it all seems like crap these days and hardly worth the effort.
Huh? The term "Intellectual Property" is a metaphor, not literal. There is zero intrinsic moral imperative against copying; copyright is a policy decision to encourage creation under a capitalist system. Other systems for encouraging creation have existed in the past (and exist concurrently with copyright).
If copyright were a property right, then "fair use" would be legalized theft.
Basically, copyright is not too different from other paper assets like publicly traded stocks. There is little intrinsic moral imperative for profit-seeking entities to make filings based on government mandated accounting principles and to not engage in insider trading schemes. Other systems, such as partnerships and private ownership, exist concurrently.
Copyrights are transferable intangible assets created by the legal instruments of the capitalist system. If you were to buy the copyright to the Metallica catalog, you can license that catalog for a return on your investment. It would be an asset of your estate like any other paper investment.
While Comcast should get plenty of blame here, it's also true that it's flat out dereliction of duty for a prosecutor to file a case based on nothing but an uninvestigated complaint from some random corporation.
At least Comcast made some attempt to fix it... and also got stonewalled by the State's Attorney's office.
You know, I've had similar thoughts about the Hertz debacle where people were thrown in jail for having rented cars and used them as agreed. I don't think if I made a phone call to the local police department and told them so-and-so stole my car they'd throw them in jail without asking any questions (at least I hope not). Why is Hertz any different?
Growing up my best friend dated a girl with very strict parents, who did not approve of the relationship. He was pulled over and arrested for grand theft auto. Spent three days in jail until she was convinced to make a statement at the police station and they let him go. Parents reported the car, which they must have owned, as stolen, and gave my friends description to police
I think early inheritance is in order in that sort of case. Couple million or whatever surely fixes the feelings against parents. And then you can live easy live with the girlfriend.
Or as Stephen William Bragg once quipped: "If you thought the army was here protecting people like yourself... I've some news for you we're here to defend wealth."
In the Hertz case sometimes the cars had already been returned. Maybe it is that easy to get people arrested even if your car is sitting in your driveway but one would hope not.
> In the Hertz case sometimes the cars had already been returned. Maybe it is that easy to get people arrested even if your car is sitting in your driveway but one would hope not.
Yes, that would be less likely. I was more thinking if you reported it stolen while it was in your friend's possession and they get pulled over.
Not really. If you do that, there will be investigation. In that particular case, likely ending with you in legal troubles, as the car is in your possession.
As soon as the DA got the letter from their only witness stating that no crime occurred (unless they thought Comcast was lying then, which doesn't seem very possible in this scenario), they would have been obligated by Model Rule 3.8(a) to discontinue the prosecution. Whether or not it was "already scheduled" should have been irrelevant.
How many times have you seen a prosecutor sanctioned under 3.8? Believe me, I have tried and tried to get prosecutors cited under it. I know prosecutors who flat-out commit felonies and the State won't do anything. Is there evidence that any prosecutor ever has been brought up on this Rule?
And I don't think just because the only witness states no crime occurred that the prosecutor will drop the charges. I would say in at least 50% of domestic battery cases the complainant will call the prosecutor at some point and tell them that no crime happened and please can they let the defendant out of jail. In almost zero cases this happens, in my experience. Normally they run it all the way to trial and sit there holding up the court waiting for the no-show witness to turn up before the judge acquits.
They wouldn't have time to do anything like due diligence on all the cases they're asked to handle. Criminalization is the go-to answer for everything nowadays. And I'm also sure that most of the time the court is unwilling to actually enforce any of a lot of different standards, or to go through its procedures in a way that actually accomplishes those procedures' purpose.
Dereliction of duty is pretty much SOP for lots of people, many of them in supposedly responsible jobs that affect other people's lives.
Wow, that brings back memories! I remember reading this article when it was posted to Slashdot because I had /just/ ordered @Home service.
Instead I went with DSL service with the phone company (forgetting the Ma' Bell branch at the time). The service never worked, it took 30 days of calling support, going through the script to get past Tier 1 (remove software, install software...etc), only to be put on hold for 30 minutes before getting dropped.
I finally went with @Home, which worked without going to jail.
The early days of broadband were an interesting time. It was a nice upgrade from ISDN or Dial-Up, though.
I feel like if something this dumb happened now, there'd be no way to get it resolved that quickly, and without hiring a lawyer. Getting Comcast lawyers to respond to you at all is the one bit in particular I can't picture happening.
Yeah, even accounting issues are unresolvable today. My cable company started charging me for an ultra HD TV supplement... While I have internet only.
I didn't notice right away so a couple months went by. I called them, they stopped charging me, and credited my cable account back. But what is utterly crazy, is that that credit is never used. The months come and go by, and balance is still -$50 (i.e. I have an over payment of 50)
I called a few times to get to money back, because, it's my money. I received 3 different explanations that were obviously made up and contradicting each other (call centers make shit up all the time). Eventually someone told me the balance will be paid off when I close my account and the only way I have to recover it is to change operators. Except they don't have competition where I am.
It's trivial, not a jail time, but this simple enough process of "take that amount and write a cheque" is already impossible because a) no-one knows b) no-one cares c) I'm not gonna sue on such a low amount d) I can't leave e) there's no incentive whatsoever for anyone to expand some effort to understand what is happening to my account f) no-one has any sort of any power, and escalations are a myth
Yea this appears to be the easiest way to do it, turn off autopay, let your account go into default for a day or two, they’ll use the credit, then if your bill is higher than $50, just pay it off and turn autopay back on.
I donno, there's a chance that the credit doesn't get used, they charge me interest and fees for missed payment, and I get to spend hours on the phone to get these reversed
This ran through my head so many times while I was reading this. I hesitate to believe Comcast was ever a good company, but it seems they were a much better company back then.
And yeah, I expect if this happened to anyone today, the first bit of advice anyone (including myself) would give them would be to get a lawyer to handle it.
You can't even get a lawyer to call you back anymore because they're working from home too - which means they are at the beach all day with the kids, and will maybe check their voicemail in the next few days.
Have you tried to get in touch with a handyman, or a building contractor, or a pool service guy, or a CPA, or a doctor’s office or basically any service provider lately? Nobody seems to be picking up the phone anymore in any profession. I had to leave a message on a home painter’s voice mail saying “I have a stack of cash right here that I want to give to you to paint my house! Please for fuck’s sake call me back!”
Hypothesis: most service providers were previously operating on an interruptible work stack (LIFO), because persistently-annoying people could "jump the queue." Now with work-from-home they're doing strict FIFO (as they should!); and it turns out their queue is long.
I've got a different theory. Tradespeople prioritize based on how much a job pays. So if you haggle them down, make them deal with insurance, or your type of job doesn't command much money, they'll happily keep you in their queue as an option in case work dries up, but won't be interested in doing your job as long as they're getting paid more for doing other jobs.
Which is entirely reasonable, no? They have every right to maximise how much they can earn in their available working time, they don't owe anything to anyone else.
That's logical as an argument, but I think it explains too much — why wouldn't tradespeople have been doing this before the pandemic? What was the counterveiling force to priority-queuing?
I'm sure it has always existed, but has seemingly gotten much worse. I'd say the general boom in demand plus the continual upwards price marches of trumpflation have made the dynamic much stronger.
There's also a general feeling that the pandemic "changed things". I can't quite put my finger on the whole extent of that, but I can definitely see the overall feeling of everyone being out for themselves contributing to shamelessly playing the BATNA.
Oh man, lawyers are delightfully responsive, at least in my experience (both working as a lawyer, and working with outside counsel). I send emails after 11p and get a response before midnight, even as a pro bono client.
Whenever that happens, I am reminded of what my life was like when all of my work emails were promptly responded to. I am also reminded that I should be glad to have escaped a world where such timeliness-at-all-hours is the expectation!
I remember during COVID lawyers starting doing their court calls on video. They would regularly do them from the driving seat of their cars, and I watched one doing his call while shopping for groceries.
Here in Australia, you would just need to call the TIO to get it sorted out. Likewise if financial institutions are stuffing you about, call ACMA. If it's an energy company, call Energy and Water.
A perfect example of how the private sector cannot self regulate to the benefit of consumers simply because a profit motive exists.
Every time I've made an ombudsman complaint I have received Good Service™ from the company and a speedy resolution to my problem.
Fellow Australian here. I can confirm every word of this. The TIO gets things done. The telecom companies live in fear of the ombudsman's office, to the point that even mentioning their name can get things moving.
It seems worth saying that in this instance a lot of the problem was that once it got into the hands of the prosecutors Comcast could not simply "just drop" the charges but only request that the state do so.
I actually think that a lot of the problem is the fact that "cable theft" is a class of crime all on its own!
"Sometimes, operators turn on a signal by accident or forget to deactivate it after a tenant stops a cable subscription. People are liable for any services they use in this way and it is generally advisable to contact the cable company to report an unexpected cable signal"
The private sector is not expected to be able to self-regulate by free market advocates. With the exception of anarcho-capitalists, those who believe in a free market regard the government's role as integral, in providing public goods like an effective justice system that polices misbehavior like fraud.
What distinguishes a belief in free markets is believing that misbehavior—that government bodies have a right to punish and prohibit—does not include mutually voluntary interactions, like selling high-risk financial instruments to willing customers, who according to a court, are deemed to have provided informed consent to those risks.
Every time I see the phrase "free market" I like to point out the term originated from Adam Smith who used it to describe "markets free from rent-seeking behaviour." Which is COMPLETELY different than the way the phrase is used today.
Also, "Capitalism" used to mean "using capital to increase capital." We now use it to mean "using capital to increase private wealth."
I understand what you're trying to say and am not refuting it. I just think it's funny we let "bandits" [1] redefine the vocabulary of the social construction of commerce.
1. Obviously I do not mean to imply bankers are "bandits" in the classical sense. Not a single one of them went to jail in 2008. Were they bandits, they most certainly would have wound up in the hoosegow.
Adam Smith was also an advocate of free markets as the term is defined today. Wealth of Nations is replete with moral objections to suppressing the right to freely contract—even to prevent combinations he found dangerous, like industy interests congregating—and praise for less interventionist government policies like low taxes, etc.
This was a fascinating read; good on the author for not losing her cool in that absurd two months. As a British citizen, though, there were a number of things that piqued my interest about the proceedings as described in Maryland and the USA in general.
- Why was the Maryland State Attorney so keen to continue with the prosecution, despite a hostile witness? In general, why do individuals and companies appear (to an outsider) to have so much influence in the USA to 'press charges'? From a theoretical perspective, it doesn't seem like there is any advantage to the criminal justice system in allowing people to persuade the prosecutors to open a case, since a large company like Comcast could churn out hundreds of vaguely plausible but socially inconsequential claims of fraud, when the prosecutors could surely find better things to spend their time on.
- Why is it possible to attempt to 'avoid being served' at all? I can't see anything wrong with receiving the notice by mail like any other correspondence. Are police officers in the USA really expected to just drive around as glorified (and armed, for that matter) postmen for the prosecutor's notices of petty criminal charges?
- Finally, and, for me, most importantly, how could the author have acquired a criminal record from a case that was dropped prior to a trial, let alone a conviction? It seems really dodgy that, in order to 'expunge' the record of a crime that the state doesn't necessarily think occurred, you have to agree to indemnify a third party from your claims of damages when that third party had no involvement originally except to initially report the 'crime', and even more so in this case, as the author opens by noting that there wasn't even a contractual relationship between them!
I'm under no pretence that my own country's judiciary is perfect, but it appears to me that the USA has a number of bizarre procedural bottlenecks that could be fixed with little more than a stroke of a pen. That begs the question: who stands to gain from this? Eagerly awaiting responses from knowledgable and/or wise Americans!
>In general, why do individuals and companies appear (to an outsider) to have so much influence in the USA to 'press charges'?
They don't. Individuals and companies cannot bring charges against someone. They can report a crime (like Comcast did in this case) and then the government can determine if they want to prosecute. Someone saying they want to press charges is just signaling that they are willing to cooperate with the prosecution. Likewise saying that you wont press charges is just signalling that you won't cooperate with the persecution. In either case they don't actually have to listen to you.
>since a large company like Comcast could churn out hundreds of vaguely plausible but socially inconsequential claims of fraud
Filing a false police report is a crime. If Comcast actually testified in court then it would be perjury. They'd also likely be subject to lawsuits from everyone they falsely accused once this was all discovered.
>- Why was the Maryland State Attorney so keen to continue with the prosecution, despite a hostile witness?
Speaking in generalities without knowing Maryland's state situation specifically, but whereas US Attorneys (federal) are executive positions (nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate), state level is (including Maryland) an elected position (you'll note the author mentioning voting for one of them). So politics ends up playing some role in that they want to get reelected, so be "tough" on certain causes of the day etc. Britain has plenty of history of that too fwiw. Prosecutorial discretion should play a role but it's not always pure. That said this was probably nothing special, merely in the same category as minor thefts, where if someone was guilty it'd be some sort of plea. Very bad to be caught in the grinder, but no sort of conspiracy. Someone complained of a small crime, state didn't do a good job with it.
>In general, why do individuals and companies appear (to an outsider) to have so much influence in the USA to 'press charges'? From a theoretical perspective, it doesn't seem like there is any advantage to the criminal justice system in allowing people to persuade the prosecutors to open a case, since a large company like Comcast could churn out hundreds of vaguely plausible but socially inconsequential claims of fraud, when the prosecutors could surely find better things to spend their time on.
This is a weird statement. In the majority of cases who else would you generally expect to kick off a case but the victim of a crime? It's always up to the government whether to start (or stop) a prosecution, but we thankfully do not live in a panopticon and thus the biggest source of starting criminal trials is... people reporting crimes. Prosecutors do have limited time and resources, so what they choose to pursue is going to depend on a lot of calculations both sometimes unreasonable and often completely reasonable. Whether what they pick is the best use of their time or not is not a trivial question. And again, Maryland AG is an elected position, so if people were angry about them going after cable fraud at all they'd be free to campaign against them on that.
>- Why is it possible to attempt to 'avoid being served' at all? I can't see anything wrong with receiving the notice by mail like any other correspondence.
Millions of people have no permanent address, or may only check their mail once in a long while. Mail sometimes goes missing (for weeks, months, or permanently). We're talking criminal prosecution here though even civil suits are no joke. It is an absolutely vital small bit of justice vs the opposing party (and particularly the vast powers of the state) to at the very minimum ensure people absolutely know they are being sued. And in turn have a chance to muster their defense, meet court deadlines and so on. There are reasonable safeguards if a court decides someone is purposefully evading, but there is a bar there.
>Are police officers in the USA really expected to just drive around as glorified (and armed, for that matter) postmen for the prosecutor's notices of petty criminal charges?
Yes, and the government can suck it the hell up. There are also professional servers who can be hired. But reasonable efforts must be expended to ensure someone being prosecuted or sued has been given adequate notice of that fact. The flipside is abuse of default judgements, which is far, far worse.
>- Finally, and, for me, most importantly, how could the author have acquired a criminal record from a case that was dropped prior to a trial, let alone a conviction?
They... couldn't? Author clearly is not a lawyer and was confused on something there. Maybe they're talking about some sort of credit report Comcast had filed as well. Or they just wanted the court records sealed (they mention getting spam mail pretty fast) or I don't know. But they weren't convicted of anything and thus had no "criminal record".
>I'm under no pretence that my own country's judiciary is perfect, but it appears to me that the USA has a number of bizarre procedural bottlenecks that could be fixed with little more than a stroke of a pen.
I could pick a handful of cases from British history going back decades and draw broad conclusions about the entire country as well and it'd also be silly.
What strikes me most is the level of anxiousness people in the US develop when faced with frivolous/absurd charges. This guy is working so hard - hours and hours - trying to convince Comcast to get their shit right and install a video trap! Here where I live, you would just lough out loud, lean back and continue watching TV.
Because you know it would take a judge exactly 1 minute to consider two facts - 1) you had a contract for that cable and 2) installing a video trap is not your job - before he'd slap the charges back into the face of the cable companies attorney.
> This guy is working so hard - hours and hours - trying to convince Comcast to get their shit right and install a video trap!
Yeah, I wouldn't care about that.
> I live, you would just lough out loud, lean back and continue watching TV.
Here where I live I wouldn't even connect a TV unless I have paid for the service. I wouldn't know if they forgot to install a video trap.
> it would take a judge exactly 1 minute to consider two facts - 1) you had a contract for that cable and 2) installing a video trap is not your job
Yeah well. But what if Comcast brings in "evidence" that they have installed a video trap? Maybe their guy documented installing one but forgot to actually do it. Or maybe he installed it on the wrong line. Now you are not laughing because on paper it seems like you have opened up the box and removed the video trap.
I don't know where you live but even in my European country you should be anxious when interacting with judicial bureaucracy. Kafka's "The trial" is still relevant today.
This is what life is like on the bleeding edge. In 1999 he was one of the first to "cut the cord" and it was a situation that Comcast was not yet ready to understand.
Seems also like too much talking with the company. I had cable internet only around this time and for some time a trap wasn't set. Why would you tell the company? Just don't watch cable TV if you have concerns.
I know nothing about law, but I thought maybe expunging the record was like “garbage collecting” the records of the case, which would make it impossible to reference them in future litigation, such as the counter-litigation against Comcast.
That does seem to me like a fairly obvious case of evil to me.
I guess the reason is that they probably could have sued for malicious prosecution and asked the court to expunge it without signing a waiver, but it was easier to just sign.
Comcast/Xfinity is a criminal organization. Hasn't changed. Don't give the your money.
When's the last time an honest, reputable business changed its name? I've seen name changes in restaurants, social networks, apartment buildings, duct cleaning scammers, and it's never for a good reason.
Interestingly... in the UK... they did something similar to the DSL Provider / ISP split we did here in the states. So you could order cable service from one company and layer 3 from a completely different company. People tell me it's done wonders for competition there.
Well yes. Openreach were fixing a problem with my phone like yesterday, that’s generally a monopoly.
My layer 3 service is from A&A, which suits my needs. Other people probably wouldn’t want to chat with the engineers on IRC when there’s a problem though so they would go with talk talk or Bt or whatever.
Oh man. I would have LOVED to be able to talk to Lumen engineers via IRC a couple years ago. It took about 4 1/2 months to work through the army of script-reading CS reps to get to a manager who agreed to let me talk to a tier-2 rep who immediately put me in the queue for a callback from an engineer. Within 5 minutes of talking with THAT engineer, they had enough info to realize someone had mis-keyed my account number in one of their internal tools. It took another five minutes for them to correct it and within an hour my intarwebs were working fine. I suspect that had I been able to talk to a tier-2 engineer (even if via IRC) it would have taken at most a day to resolve.
Tip for anybody in a similar situation, when they give you a gift card and a years free service, it means they are certain you can sue them for at least 10 times that amount.
I would pay 10 times that amount not to be in a lawsuit against a large corporation. Have you ever had to do a videotaped deposition? They get to ask you anything they want while you are under oath for about a day and they aren't very nice about it. And that is just one thing you are going to have to do for your measly couple thousand dollars.
I remember getting a cease-and-desist letter, registered mail, from @Home because I was running a server off of my cable modem. Still, it was pretty amazing at the time! A 3 megabit connection (only 128K upstream, IIRC) in 1998 was nothing to sneeze at...
Yes, absolutely! But you probably won't get a registered letter about it. Maybe a nasty call or an email. I remember having to call into the @Home NOC and have them re-scan my server.
In the Netherlands customers were often left connected even in the analog days. The base package was cheap and the premium channels were scrambled anyway. I had cable for free like this after I moved into a new place for years.
I spent a lot of time soldering descramblers which worked for a year or so until the coding changed again. Only for personal use. They usually only managed video anyway, not audio. But it didn't matter as in the premium material I was interested as an exploring teenager the video was way more important than the audio
>:)
Of course this was pre-internet which solved that material access issue.
But I don't think people ever actually went to jail for this stuff. With the premium boxes there was no way to detect it, they could only go after the sellers of the kits.
It does seem like it would have saved a lot of heartache to have just coughed up the money for an attorney but that in itself is unfair -- it's a significant enough expense and for some is likely to be out of reach altogether.
Yep, it absolutely sucks. And while the average person in this circumstance has some limited recourse, they certainly have no guarantee of being made whole.
But here’s the rub: I’ve seen very intelligent people run up against the legal system before - some civil cases, some criminal. The ones that came out well were the ones that realized their opponent was an uncaring machine designed to grind people into dust in a competition whose rules they found alien. The others thought they didn’t need an attorney, and that their intellect would carry the day.
Totally unfair. Biased against plenty of disadvantaged people, even. Sucks, but them’s the breaks.
She got everything dropped and her record expunged and didn't pay a dime in lawyers fees... seems like she estimated her competency with the legal system pretty accurately actually.
> seems like she estimated her competency with the legal system pretty accurately actually.
Or she got lucky?
You know if something in your home catches fire and smoke is billowing out of it is recommended to call the fire brigade and to try to put it out. Yes, sometimes you will get lucky and it will just peter out. And because of that sometimes you will find stories where something caught fire, they did all the wrong things and yet they ended up all okay. Would you conclude from that that they "estimated their firefighting competency accurately"?
Part of the reason you call a lawyer early is so they can help steer things away from the point where you need a lawyer to mount a criminal defense. Cheaper that way, too.
No crime being committed isn't really the standard. "Due process" is the standard. If you go through the process and the judge decides you're guilty, you're guilty. And you're going to do your time. It doesn't matter whether or not you committed the crime, only that you can prove you were not provided "due process."
Innocent people frequently wind up in prison and even after exculpatory evidence is discovered, it takes A LOT of effort to get them released. Because the state argues "they were provided with due process."
Which is still not really like this case. Hence the author ultimately managing to get out of it without the services of an attorney and without any actual trial taking place.
Yes. You're talking about a specific, I'm talking about a general case. We know that this wasn't the case here because the story didn't end with "I was carted away to prison." My comment was in reference to the general case of US jurisprudence the OP discusses when she says "not only is justice blindfolded, but is blind." In the GENERAL case, you can still be convicted even if exculpatory evidence exists. And this is the point I should have emphasized:
Do not assume that the mere existence of exculpatory evidence will allow you to evade successful prosecution.
(But thankfully, it worked fine in this case and works in many other cases.)
Oh, give over. It's a basic fraud case, you're not hiring a white-shoe firm to represent you.
A few hundred bucks gets a lawyer to look at the case and make the phone calls - or send a letter or two - on your behalf. And the bonus is that they actually know what to say, as opposed to whatever you frenetically google, and know who to say it to, as opposed to whoever you happen to find in the phone book. Just having a lawyer signals to your counterparty that you are not winging it; that combined with an incredibly weak (at best) case & a complainant who has backed away can lead to your case being dismissed with less investment in time & worry than if you did it yourself.
What are you talking about? Everything turned out pretty much exactly as it should, albeit with a silly amount of beaurocratic overhead (as should be expected for the legal system).
Not saying you shouldn’t get a lawyer, but I don’t see how you can claim she “overestimated her competency”
This was related to a criminal case. Threatening any kind of litigation or trying to defend yourself without an attorney puts you in the category of pro se litigant, the territory of jailhouse appellants and sovereign citizens. Even if you are smart and right, the system has already decided you are crazy, stupid, or both. You’re screwed from the get go.
Certainly not criminal, but I was on a county commission which put me in the position to watch people litigate pro se regarding land use suits in California. And I would occasionally be in court waiting for a final declaration (that for some reason had to be in the courtroom.) There were plenty of people who successfully defended themselves pro se, but I don't think I ever saw anything more exciting than someone bringing in documentation clarifying they weren't the owners of a property on which some crime occurred (apparently the county's GIS system is not the local sheriff / prosecutor's strong point.)
I'm not trying to imply you should represent yourself on a felony case, but at least in California in the past, people have successfully had cases dismissed when they appeared in court, representing themselves with documentation the prosecutor should have looked at before filing the case.
It resonates a tiny bit to my brief experience with Comcast (or actually any other providers being hostile to clients) in 2014 when stayed in the US briefly and they were the only one providing much needed broadband in that area (unsure if I was doing a study on the competitors otherwise). As you can imagine having broadband just for 4 months for a forigner was something of a unique deal for them, we had to go into some sort of special agreement at the Comcast desk (I do not remember much of the specifics) of which I felt I must have a proof about on top of the spoken promise of the representative that 'this and that will work this way in your situation'. Somehow I felt the one cancelling my service will not be that keen on alterations like the one I talked with about getting into contract with them. I am unsure but I think I asked for a written additional note some sort or perhaps went into an agreed recording of the conversation, but what I am sure about is that my wife - who left later than me and managed the closure of the service - had difficulty convincing them that it was just a 4 months service not an early termination of a 12 or 24 months one. Those proof asked was life saver with them and left a dent in my recollection that words of Comcast is not to be trusted easily but you need armor strength explicit proofs surrounding you in dealing with them.
And actually with several others. Since then the similar paranoid defensive dealing with overly kind and eager representatives saved me lots of trouble. It is exhausting not to trust anything and is shame we have to waste time and energy on such instead of just honest processes.
It’s insane to me that “cable theft” is even considered a criminal offense… it’s literally a civil dispute between a corporation and a person, about alleged misuse of service, with very little damage outside of theoretically “harming” the profits of the corporation, a notion that quite literally requires assuming an argument ad absurdum.
How stupid does a politician have to be to promote this as a criminal offense? It just denigrates criminal law.
Edit: my bad, it was promoted by Barry fucking Goldwater, a bona fide fascist. So not stupidity, just genuinely evil cruelty.
Interesting story that’s sadly too representative of the gross incompetence and negligence of some companies. In scenarios like this absolutely do sue them and then deny every settlement offer their corporate lawyers throw at you, continually demanding a jury trial. After a few failed attempts to get the case thrown out on technicalities they will start freaking out knowing they don’t stand a chance in front of a jury and will offer up very very generous settlements to compensate you for their incompetence.
This is really the amazing part of the internet, seeing a file that has been casually hosted on a web server since 1999, not even budging for HTTPS-- I feel teleported back in time
It's all static content (and badly in need of refurbishment, which I will be responsible for) -- but, yes, please don't abuse the good folks at MIT's CSAIL who donate the hosting.
I had cable modem when DSL was being pushed by all the telcos. On my street, everyone switched over to DSL and I think I was the sole cable modem user and the access point was right in front of my house. I was getting regular speeds of 1Mbps cause no one else was using cable modem. This was glorious in 1999.
Even though this happened 25 years ago (sidenote, good God I'm getting old) it still made my blood boil. Makes you wonder how many people who weren't as proactive weren't as fortunate as to have the bogus charges dismissed.
Sure, I suppose just about anyone could shrug off having their life ruined by an unsubstantiated criminal charge by simply framing it in the context of genocide or thermonuclear war.
You're correct, it was not, but GP was referring to those who weren't proactive or fortunate to have the bogus charges dismissed.
The original poster had the time, money, and wherewithal required to document the issue, pay for legal representation, fight the case, chase expungement, and absorb the damages to her character from the remnant records of her criminal charge that remained even after expungement of official records.
Far less has destroyed the livelihood of far more people.
I suppose I'm just old, and people doing stupid things isn't going to make my blood boil any more. I've accepted it by now as human nature. If you want to actually annoy me, you need to do something purely evil, like harming innocent people just to advance some stupid agenda of your own. Russians firing missiles at apartment buildings in Ukraine is a current example.
Or, like, someone having their life destroyed by being sent to jail for having cable internet as set up by the provider? The author clearly had the means to sort her own case out, but you can certainly imagine someone who didn't and would be in jail for it.
Sure, on the scale of evil it's nowhere near the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but I don't think this is shrug your shoulder and say "tough titty" territory either. How would you like it if you were unlucky enough to not have been able to sort this out and be in jail for it? On the bright side, it's not as bad as getting your house bombed!
Certainly, there was somebody who was actually sent to jail, even after patiently explaining their case in court, and if the management of the cable provider knew exactly what was happening, and continued their persecution because of some stupid business reason, it would be more concerning.
It would perhaps be an interesting new experience, when interesting new experiences are hard to find. But it's probably one of those things that seems more interesting in theory than it turns out to be in practice, and I'd get tired of it after a few days.
- Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working".
- Having to increasingly go do cable TV disconnects because people were usually in a bad way and I had more than one colleague that had either had a gun pulled on them or straight-up shot and left to die up a pole for most of a day while trying to disconnect cable.
- Having to increasingly go on cable TV installs because people's shitty TVs backfeeding electricity into the cable line meant I was getting zapped at least once a week.
That said, I met a lot of cool people, gave out a lot of free TV/HBO because I didn't care unless the customer was a dick, wrote down a lot of funny stories and ultimately realized that I could go college in spite of dropping out of high school because I happened to install the non-traditional student advisor's cable modem.
My colleagues said they'd see me back at the shop in four years after I graduated with a philosophy degree. Jokes on them, I dropped out after getting a job at Google.