Wednesday: Hili dialogue

October 9, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Küürupäev” in Estonian): Wednesday, October 9, 2024.  Foodwise, it’s Submarine-Hoagie-Hero-Grinder Day, all American regional linguistic descriptions of an overstuffed sandwich on a roll, here’s a sub from Wikipedia with Dijon mustard on the side:

jeffreyw, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Moldy Cheese Day, National Pet Obesity Awareness Day, National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work Day (see below), National Polenta Day (cultural appropriation), International Beer and Pizza Day, and National Pro-Life Cupcake Day (WHAT?).

My teddy bear, named Toasty, is always at work with me. Here he is with me in 2002 (I’ve aged more than he has!):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT columnist Kristen Soltis Anderson discusses “Why I can’t answer the two election questions I’m asked the most” (archived here). It’s a tantalizing headline but the answer is anodyne:

Our closely divided electorate leaves little room for big swings in public opinion, given how strongly views of Mr. Trump seem to be anchoring the state of the race. His floor is high, his ceiling is low and the race is being contested in the narrow turf in between. Meanwhile, as I wrote recently, the campaigns are competing to define Ms. Harris. Yet according to a recent YouGov/Economist poll, only 3 percent of Harris voters say they are even considering the possibility of voting for Mr. Trump, and only 3 percent of Trump voters say the same about Ms. Harris.

I raise this to pre-emptively address the two questions that I’m asked the most these days:

  • Who will win?

  • Will [this thing that just happened] change the race at all?

The only correct answers are: “Nobody should feel certain he knows” and “Almost certainly not.” The data we have, if correct, suggest a race too close to be truly knowable with any confidence. And that “if correct” is doing a lot of work, as my newsroom colleague Nate Cohn points out in his thoughtful report about poll weighting and this strange election. Even if the polls are accurate, we don’t know who’ll win. And if the polls are failing to capture something, then all bets are off.

With a victory by either candidate possible, no outcome should come as a big surprise. It isn’t likely that we’ll see huge swings in the polls between now and Election Day, either.

And indeed, the election is a squeaker, with not much movement in either direction since Trump’s disastrous performance in the debate gave Harris a slight edge, though not in the electoral vote. A new Times/Siena poll shows how close it is, but, like other polls, shows a thin lead by Harris:

Are we going to have another period where, if he loses, Trump will claim rigged voting, “the greatest fraud in the history of America”? I don’t think I could take that again.

*The Times of Israel documents the new wave of anti-Israeli demonstrations at Columbia as pro-Palestinian protestors celebrate October 7, the Day of Butchery.

Standing sentinel on the grassy lawn of Columbia University’s main quad on Monday were over a dozen 10-foot-tall milk cartons, each bearing the face of an American citizen kidnapped by Hamas terrorists exactly one year after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Previously shown outside the Democratic National Convention, “Memory Lane: October 7th Art Installation,” was meant to be a contemplative experience, as many of the 251 people kidnapped and 1,200 murdered in southern Israel during the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre include family members and friends of students.

But with metal barricades and dividers, scores of public safety officers and anti-Israel protesters chanting “The only solution is intifada revolution,” and “We will win,” the tension on campus was palpable.

. . . In the weeks leading up to the October 7 anniversary, Jewish student groups, including Students Supporting Israel, Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Chabad at Columbia University, and Aryeh at Columbia/Barnard Hillel, had asked the school’s interim president Katrina Armstrong to allow the Columbia Jewish community to mourn openly. While the installation was approved, several other events will be held indoors and closed to press, including the evening’s Columbia/Barnard Hillel program.

Because the Morningside Heights campus remains closed to outsiders through Wednesday, this reporter was required to have an escort from the university office of public affairs and was only permitted 30 minutes on campus.

. . . Earlier Monday morning, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an unrecognized campus group, staged a walkout as part of a citywide “Students Flood NYC for Gaza” initiative. The demonstration was organized by Within Our Lifetime, an openly pro-Hamas group that calls for Israel’s destruction.

In their call to action, CUAD urged protesters to mask their faces, wear all black, and conceal any identifying markings such as tattoos, birthmarks, and piercings, according to a Friday Instagram post.

These people are cowards who don’t want to be identified.  If they’re proud of their cause, and exercising civil disobedience, why do they conceal themselves? Because, of course, they don’t want to be punished. Ergo, they’re avoiding the consequences of civil disobedience.

The Times of Israel asked several students wearing keffiyehs to comment on the morning’s events; all declined to speak with the press.

The demonstrators’ chanting was so loud that even when the teaching assistant in Lederman’s classroom shut the windows, the chants could still be heard, he said.

There’s no more pretense among these protestors of supporting Palestine in general, or of “we’re just criticizing Netanyahu”. Their goal is to support Hamas and Hezbollah and the aims of these terrorists: to kill Jews and eliminate the Jewish state.  Here we have Americans, living in a land that prizes democracy, liberty, and equal rights, siding with terror groups that are murderous, misogynistic, and theocratic. It’s baffling.

*As any fool could predict, and the WSJ reports, Iran is close to having the ultimate deterrent of an attack: nuclear weapons:

Israel has shown Iran’s two most important deterrents against an attack—its ballistic missiles and allied militia Hezbollah—are less powerful than previously thought. Now attention is turning to whether Iran will accelerate its nuclear program to deter its biggest regional foe.

For months, Iranian officials have said that Tehran has accumulated most of the knowledge needed to build a weapon and that it might reconsider Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s two-decade-old pledge not to procure weapons of mass destruction.

In late September, a former head of Iran’s atomic agency, Fereydoun Abbasi, suggested that Tehran could start producing 90% enriched, weapons-grade uranium. U.S. officials have said it would take Iran less than two weeks to convert its current 60% nuclear-fuel stockpile into weapons-grade material.

The 2015 nuclear deal curbed Iran’s program in return for sanctions relief. In the years since the U.S. pulled out, Tehran has significantly advanced its program, leaving it on the cusp of being able to develop a nuclear weapon.

“The weakening of its capabilities versus Israel will force Tehran to develop new sources of deterrence, increasing pressure on expanding the nuclear program,” said Gregory Brew, senior analyst on Iran and energy at the Eurasia Group consulting firm. “What we’re likely to see is more pressure to advance the program and warnings that it may not stay ‘peaceful.’”

. . . While it claims its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, Iran is the only nonnuclear weapons power that produces highly enriched uranium. It currently has enough near-weapons-grade fuel for almost four nuclear weapons, according to the most recent data from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran also has been conducting experiments with uranium metal, a key component of a nuclear weapon, and has cut back much of the international oversight granted by the nuclear deal.

U.S. intelligence officials and the IAEA no longer offer what were once standard assurances that Tehran isn’t working on a weapons program. U.S. officials said this summer that Tehran had begun activities to gain more of the knowledge needed to build a bomb. Iran’s weaponization work would be harder to swiftly detect. Some experts believe Iran could produce a crude nuclear device in a matter of months.

“Curbed Iran’s program in return for sanctions relief,” my tuches! That whole time Iran was developing nuclear weapons while first Obama and then Biden looked the other way while handing dollars to Iran. Now the only way to stop the program is through military force. And now Iran and Biden are in harmony in insisting that Israel cannot attack Iran’s nukes without crossing a red line. What that “red line” may be for Iran isn’t yet known, but for the U.S. it’s the threat to withhold financial and military aid. Thank easily duped Democratic Presidents for this situation.

*Oy, gewalt! Every time you think Trump can’t do something dumber, it appears in the next day’s news.  Here’s a tidbit from a new book by Bob Woodward (archived here).

As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.

Putin, according to the book, told Trump, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”

Four years later, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have persisted, Woodward reports, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House and Putin orchestrates his bloody assault on Ukraine. In early 2024, the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, so he could conduct a private phone call with the Russian leader, according to Woodward’s account.

The book does not describe what the two men purportedly discussed, and it quotes a Trump campaign official casting doubt on the supposed contact. But the unnamed Trump aide cited in the book indicated that the GOP standard-bearer may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021.

These interactions between Trump and the authoritarian leader of a country at war with an American ally form the basis of Woodward’s conclusion that Trump is worse than Richard M. Nixon, whose presidency was undone by the Watergate scandal exposed a half-century ago by Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein.

It would be one thing if the U.S. since covid test kits to the Russian people, which is of course a humanitarian gesture, but sending them specially for the personal use of Putin is like sending them to Yahya Sinwar.  Trump clearly loves a fellow strongman, and continues to keep in touch with him. If Trump wins, it’s bye-bye, Ukraine.

*Finally, some good news for those who want more gun restrictions, like me. The NYT reports that the Supreme Court is looking askance at the legality of “ghost guns”—untraceable guns that can be put together from kits (article archived here).

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared sympathetic on Tuesday to the Biden administration’s restrictions on kits that allow people to make untraceable homemade guns.

The case centered on whether the federal agency responsible for regulating firearms had acted lawfully in enacting a rule to address a surge in “ghost guns,” weapons made from kits available for purchase online and heralded as easy enough to assemble in less than an hour.

Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices that the agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, had responded to “an explosion in crimes” connected to ghost guns.

“The reason you want a ghost gun is specifically because it’s unserialized and can’t be traced,” Ms. Prelogar said.

Among the limits the agency imposed on the kits: requiring gun makers and sellers to be licensed to sell the kits, ensuring the products are marked with serial numbers so they can be traced and having would-be buyers pass a background check.

In recent years, the conservative wing of the court has proved skeptical of allowing federal administrative agencies too much leeway without specific authorization from Congress. Last term, it overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, firearm attachments that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire at nearly the rate of a machine gun.

But at least five of the justices on Tuesday seemed to favor the limits imposed by the Biden administration, with at least two conservatives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, showing skepticism toward by the plaintiffs, gun manufacturers and owners who argued they should be able to purchase ghost gun kits.

The gun people are like a pushy businessman: it’s not enough that they get to buy guns, often without background checks and few restrictions, and, in some places, get to carry them either openly or concealed. No, they want untraceable guns.  Now why would anybody want one of those? I can’t imagine. . . . .

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is concerned about the garden:

Hili: Something is eating this bush.
A: Yes, reportedly all such bushes in the region are sick.
In Polish:
Hili: Coś ten krzak zżera.
Ja: Tak, podobno wszystkie w okolicy chorują.

*******************

From Jesus of the Day; the sign of a nice person:

From Richard:

From Godless Mom (h/t Stephan); a cat guru:

And a bonus photo (and text) by reader Chris:

I went to the Brandenburg Gate last night as I’d heard there was going to be a memorial for 7/10 and was very moved to see it lit up like this. There were a lot of people there and the atmosphere was completely calm and peaceful.

Masih hasn’t posted anything new in a while. So here’s a tweet from Gad Saad reprising the contents of his book The Parasitie Mind. Listen if you have 1.5 hours to spare, or sample it:

Two from my feed. There are no bad bears!!

And

As people sometimes say, “I can’t even. . . ”   (SJP is “Students for Justice in Palestine”):

From Simon (ref. Marjorie Taylor Greene): “Brent has a rant on weather control.  I do love “storm the capitol Barbie” as a descriptor.  Also – ‘it’s raining cats and dogs – they must be feeding the people in Springfield’.”

Goats!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, more brave people fly through a hurricane:

Typed from life!

41 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Thanks for posting the picture Chris sent of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. It warms the heart. Was anything like that done in USA, in solidarity with Israel?

  2. Jerry: you ask, “… No, they want untraceable guns. Now why would anybody want one of those? I can’t imagine. . . . .”

    I ask you: why would anyone want untraceable property? To prevent it from being confiscated, maybe? But you may think this implausible in our democracy?

    In 1938, in an advanced Western democracy, a law was passed requiring the registry of the property of Jewish persons. Why would anyone oppose such a law?

    1. You are dominating the thread: three comments out of three. Please read the Roolz on the left sidebar. And no, the government has no plans to confiscate guns. Only paranoid gun-lovers think that this is the reason to have unregistered guns.

      1. But if you are caught with an unregistered gun, won’t the police take it from you? You won’t get it back just because you belatedly register it, will you?
        Gun-control advocates freely say at least some guns should be banned. Doesn’t that mean confiscating them from people who own them in violation of a ban?

        Registration is an essential step toward confiscation. Canada for many years designated semi-automatic centre-fire rifles as “restricted” (as well as all handguns.) This meant they had to be registered, like all firearms, but also kept only at the registered address. You can’t take or have them anywhere except directly to, from, and at a licensed shooting range or gunsmith. So when the government banned these semi-automatic rifles after a 2020 spree shooting that involved illegally acquired firearms, i.e. guns already illegal under existing law, in theory all it had to do was send its minions to each registered address and demand, in return for an IOU, the production of all now-banned firearms required to kept there. If the owner couldn’t produce, there and then, all the guns on the order he would be charged with a crime. This is what “common-sense” gun-control looks like, no? The law was popularly received in urban Liberal Canada. Urban mayors would have preferred a handgun ban but this was simultaneously too light and too heavy a lift. Handguns used in crimes are stolen or smuggled and not registered, so already illegal to be owned much less carried, but also too hard to find except by stop and frisk, which civil libertarians and social justice types get hives over.

        In practice, only armed police (in twos and threes) are willing to knock on the door of a house and demand firearms therein be surrendered. The federal government can’t direct the police, who judge for themselves how and when to enforce the law. The provinces, who pay for rural policing, aren’t willing to devote thinly spread police resources to this task which alienates law-abiding rural residents who don’t make a habit of shooting people and are the eyes and ears of rural crime-prevention efforts. The government has decided to punt this enforcement conundrum to after the next election. Fortunately no one has been shot with one of these banned guns since 2020 even though all remain in the hands of their owners.

        I’m not arguing for or against gun bans. Just pointing out that registration does facilitate a number of downstream functions and one of them is eventual confiscation. But, as Canada is finding, only if the state puts considerable thought, effort, and persistence into the project even when unencumbered by a Second Amendment.

        1. The state I live in does not require gun registration. I personally own both handguns and rifles and was brought up in a military household with gun safety drilled into our heads from an early age, and also took a mandatory hunters safety class at school in middle school (while the girls were learning about female bodily functions, boys were taught how to handle guns safely).
          I built a black powder rifle from a kit in high school wood shop in the late 70’s, which I don’t think had any kind of serial number at all on it and was definitely never registered.

          I see no reason to register my guns with the government. I have the serial numbers recorded in my records in case of theft but I’m not going to share them willingly. I view my right to bear arms in the same manner I exercise my right to free speech – as long as I’m not breaking any laws, the government has no right to control either.

          1. It’s a lost battle for sure – the gun rights people have won and we have no hope. The insistence on a misinterpretation of the language of the 2nd amendment is why we lead the world in school shootings, and at the top of states-not-at-war in homicides and suicides. Fear and antipathy is part of life here.

            Hey, at least we’re number one in something, right?

    2. Mandatory registering of cars hasn’t led to the collapse of Western democracy. Why would mandatory registering of guns?

      1. You took the words right out of my keyboard.

        I have to wonder what the U.S. (or Canadian) government has ever done to make some people so afraid of it.

      2. Jeremyp, you raise a good point. Why the heck do we have to register our cars? I’d be in favor of removing that too.

  3. I saw that video Dr. Cobb sent of the NOAA researchers flying through a hurricane to gather data. Courageous, certainly! But the video begs these questions: are these people competent? Have they never flown through a hurricane before? Did they not expect turbulence? There’s loose stuff all over the cabin, being tossed about! At least they appeared to have their seatbelts fastened ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    1. There were some interesting videos of air force thunderstorm research with T-33’s in the 1950’s and later NASA in an F-106 specially kitted out to take lightening strikes in the 1980’s. Risk vs reward….risk vs reward…. These guys and (now) gals are brave but not foolish. Though I am happy on the ground thank you.

  4. Have enjoyed Matthew’s NOAA P-3 flight posts. Amazing! An undergad physics major friend of mine from years ago ended up being one of these hurricane hunter pilots. He had said that he did not feel that theoretical physics satisfied a need to be attached to the real world. In looking at these videos, it appears that there is nothing more attached than being a NOAA pilot.

    Typewriter art? Never heard of it before. Amazing. I do remember in the early days of 132 column computer printers, making simple drawings, but what this guy does is incredible.

    Is the raining cats and dogs guy real or a put up job? Sheesh!

    (Three little posts in one…within the letter of the rules, but spirit?)

    1. The raining cats and dog guy, Brent Terhune, is a satirist who makes videos like the one posted here today mocking politically far-right stances and beliefs. To a libtard like me, he’s hilarious.

      1. I let a lot of these posted videos go by — time! — but on your recommendation I checked Mr. Terhune out. You’re right. He is funny. Very good satire.

          1. Don’t mean to over-comment. My excuse is that some seemed unsure if he was sincere. What makes his satire so effective is that he adopts, artfully, the voice of those he satires, as well as what he says. (I confess that if you hadn’t labeled it as satire, I might have missed it!)

  5. It seems that CBS has been “editing” its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. They have edited out a poor answer by Harris and edited in a better one. Here is a Tweet comparing the original with an edited version.

    Is this even remotely acceptable behaviour from a broadcaster such as CBS?

    (And thank god for Musk buying Twitter, so we at least have one major platform where one can point such stuff out; for all Musk’s somewhat-eccentric personality we’re way better off with him than without him.)

    3. Musk has destroyed Twitter as a viable social media platform. Pointing stuff out on it doesn’t matter anymore.

      1. Twitter is still there and works fine, and the user numbers are as high as ever. Some people may dislike the changes in moderation policy, some may choose not to use it, but I don’t see evidence that Twitter matters less than it did.

        1. After all, President Biden posted his statement declining the Democratic Party nomination X, so it must be the media platform that matters most.

          Whether or not you like Musk, I think you’d admit that it is good that stories that would have been blocked previously are now allowed, and also that the community notes function has been beneficial. Based on the Twitter files, I’d imagine that a story like this 60 Minutes thing would have been blocked by the old regime after consultation with the administration. I don’t care if it hurts someone’s chances for reelection, I am not in favor of hiding the truth from the citizenry.

          Does misinformation exist on X? Yes, lots of it, and it always will on any platform. It is free speech, until it crosses the legal line.

  6. But what if Trump giving Covid testing machines to Putin is that bit of goodwill which allows him to negotiate a settlement between Russia and the Ukraine? Biden immediately lost the ability to be a neutral third-party by choosing to vilify Putin and declaring him America’s enemy. Sinwar heads a terrorist organization; Putin heads an internationally-recognized nation.

    1. Neither Trump nor Putin would accept a just settlement. The hypothesis refutes itself.

    2. I’m unimpressed with Putin who invaded another country. No excuses.

      But it’s way more than Trump sending Covid aid. Far worse is another article today with info from the same book saying Trump dislikes Zelensky and likes Putin and is prepared to base his foreign policy on this.

      Archived version of the other article.

      https://archive.ph/KkoSe

      1. I’m not a Trump fan by any means. Looking at this objectively, Putin did not invade Ukraine when Trump was president, so whether or not he would have greenlighted it is not a discussion point. Maybe he even told Putin not to, who knows – I wasn’t there. The fact that Putin had been saber-rattling about it for a while suggests that he was prepared to invade when the time was right. Whether or not Trump likes or dislikes anyone is immaterial; it’s the actions and consequences that are the outcomes of those actions that make a difference to me. If Putin had in his head “I’m going to invade Ukraine when the US will allow me to do so”, then Biden is the one he viewed as more favorable to a positive outcome. It’s still a stalemate there with way, way too many dead young men. If Trump would have been able to avoid the invasion and the deaths by giving Putin some little gifts, then that seems reasonable to me. It also would have avoided any kind of a just or not settlement; there would have been nothing to settle. I’m firmly on the side of Ukraine; no country has the right to invade another.
        Of course the low price of oil during Trump years and lack of the Nordstream pipeline (which Trump opposed) also contributed to Russia not having funding to start a major conflict.

        The only ones who have benefitted during this conflict are the arms dealers. It’s weakened Russia too, but at a very great cost. I’d much rather trade with Russia in peace than have cities destroyed and lives destroyed.

        1. Did you read the article?

          Biden’s weakness no doubt encouraged Putin but it does not appear that Trump would take Ukraine’s side if he’s elected.

          In any case I’m not an American so I’m not voting and it doesn’t matter what I think.

  7. Another AI Nobel, another UCL one!

    Someone joked on Twitter they will award it TO AI before another woman gets one…

  8. I suspect the bat is moribund. Dehydrated or something, since this does not seem to be normal bat behavior.

    1. Maybe dying of rabies? The person who placed the sign might have been warning passers-by against contact with it. Unlike most rabies vectors, bats can excrete rabies virus in their saliva for weeks before looking sick and eventually dying.

      A child in Ontario just died of rabies, the first case in the province since 1962. Her parents noticed a bat in her bedroom where she had been sleeping. Since the child didn’t recall being bitten the family didn’t think to get rabies vaccination for her.

      Any contact with a bat, including finding one in your bedroom or in proximity to a person unable to describe the contact (e.g., pre-verbal child or cognitively impaired person) should get immediate rabies prophylaxis. Don’t let bats get into your house.

  9. In their call to action, CUAD urged protesters to mask their faces, wear all black, and conceal any identifying markings such as tattoos, birthmarks, and piercings…

    These people aren’t just cowards trying to avoid arrest; they’re also bullies trying to strike fear and intimidate. There’s no way they fail to recognize how menacing these ninja-costumes are, especially when worn by an entire group. It sends the message that “if we hurt you, you will not be able to pick out your attacker. Be compliant.”

    The SJP poster about “natives breaking free and settlers trying to commit genocide to prevent that” shows the dangerous level of self-deluded playacting going on. Believe this narrative and peaceful demonstration isn’t enough. The psychodrama requires that you, the protagonist in your head, act out here and now. The group dynamics demand that you, one cog in a perfect machine, go along with what the others do. The thinking has already been done.

  11. https://twitter.com/japantimes/status/1840985373545283742

    Japan’s Prime Minister has changed. 🇯🇵
    The general election will be held on Sunday, October 27th. 🗳
    Japan’s political system is a bit similar to the UK’s. 🇬🇧

    In 2024, France, the UK, Japan and the US are all busy with elections. 🇫🇷🇬🇧🇯🇵🇺🇸
    The US presidential election is especially hard. Best of luck to you. 🍀🙏✨

  12. It is strange that the same people who believe “they” are controlling the weather to punish red states with hurricanes are unwilling to accept that “they” through their daily activities are having an effect on global warming, which contributes to hurricane intensity and frequency.

  13. Possibly the below sheds some light on how Trump obtained the tests he sent to Putin:

    http://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/covid-19-originated-china-so-did-diagnostic-tests-saved-lives

    I reasonably assume that China assisted Russia in this regard. Is anyone in the U.S. still manufacturing face masks?

    Regarding Iran, I contemplate whether Reagan’s Iran-Contra escapade was worse than Watergate which so far as I know did not involve weapon sales and foreign adversaries.

  14. Re: untraceable guns:
    Whether a person is shot with a registered or unregistered gun, it’s next to impossible to identify the weapon unless there has been a previous ballistics test recorded on the gun, and provided that the bullet used can be found and is in good enough shape to run a ballistics check. The point is that even registered guns are not really traceable when it comes to shootings, so whether a gun is “traceable” or not is not the issue, in my opinion.

    People who register guns tend to be law-abiding individuals who care about gun safety. Guns are already illegal to own if you’re a felon, but the laws don’t seem to stop them from getting and using them. In my state I can buy a gun without registering it, so even though it has a serial number, it is still not traceable to me.

    Honestly, I don’t know the answer to reduce gun violence and I’m sick of the lives that are lost each year due to it. I disagree that making guns more difficult to obtain for non-criminals to obtain will help or that it’s a good thing, but I do understand the logic. And I don’t have any real answers, except to find and punish those who use guns to hurt others as quickly as possible.

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