volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@seanthegeek the thing is, the US system doesn't rely on voluntary respect for checks and balances. They aren't optional.

Trump can't remove checks and balances. Any president will be subject to them, whether he wants them to be there or not.

So many people running around with their hair on fire don't seem to understand just how outlandish these stories are.

The sky isn't actually falling.

@Kozmo that the trigger is released and reengaged automatically is to validate Thomas, though: that it happens automatically confirms that it happens.

@dougiec3 to say the framing came from Trump is to ignore that the framing has been around long before Trump was ever on the scene.

No, the framing didn't come from Trump. Trump got it from others as well.

@Crunk well, Congress wrote the definition, so it was our elected officials in Congress who said a bump stock was not a machine gun.

@gcvsa the thing is, this ruling wasn't a surprise. The issue with the NFA was well-known for a long time, and Congress could have stepped in at any point to clarify the NFA if it so chose.

The people we elected to Congress were apparently uninterested in banning bump stocks.

@freeschool uh huh.

It just means this will now be scraped and that you have it on there will be added to your profile in the company's database.

@Guinnessy well, it's really that the SCOTUS is NOT being political here, as much as people are trying to use them for political means.

Courts, and appeals courts in particular, are SUPPOSED to move at an unhurried pace. This is how it's supposed to work. They'll release an opinion when they want to.

Yeah, Nixon might have finished his 2nd term before the decision on the Watergate tapes. What of it? That's how courts work, and if folks wanted a fast, political outcome, that's what the political branches are for.

Congress is free to impeach in a day if it wants to. That's where one goes if in a rush.

@evan such functionality is kind of incompatible with a distributed/federated social network, though.

Without a central authority overseeing this kind of thing, there's no real central list of replies that one can order to remove.

@hittitezombie what? I'm pointing out that Trump committed an illegal action by signing his order.

I'm emphasizing how problematic his order was.

I don't know how you read that as my having no problem with it.

@antares

@Janef ok, but what to do about it?

You can point to any group of voters you'd like, but the questions become, how did it get that way and what is society going to do to engage with them?

Why are institutions ranging from the political class through journalism failing to the point that whatever group you want to point to is willing to buy bullshit? And what should they do to regain their place?

@Free_Press

@Janef see, I think that's part of the problem.

Anyone alarmed only once Trump was elected missed how much things had been going off the rails since before Trump even announced his candidacy. Folks didn't see the alarm bells, didn't work on solving problems behind them, and that paved the way to a Trump election.

Trump is the effect. We need to address underlying causes.

But articles like these continue to get that backwards, being obsessed with Trump but not looking at the vacuum that was left open for him to fill.

@Free_Press

@DukeDuke thanks for the on the ground report

@david_megginson could it be that it's BECAUSE you haven't been on there much that their algorithms haven't seen you show interest in much, so they don't have much to show you?

My Facebook feed has plenty of content, but I can imagine if I wasn't on there regularly to click on cat pictures* the algorithm wouldn't show me more cat pictures.

*not necessarily an actual interest

@Wolven nonsense: there's plenty of use for things that are quick and dirty. The key is knowing that's what you're getting and being mindful about its limits.

Often enough in everyday life we don't need the absolute guarantee.

@Raccoon well, what about the utility of "Zionist" also referring to non-Jewish people and institutions who promote the cause of Israel?

Seems useful to me.

There's also some nuance to Israel existing. You can get into issues of how large its borders should be and what sorts of governments it should have.

@hittitezombie correct, and the order was illegal because Congress had never passed a bill granting authority for such an order.

That there was no bill giving legal authority is the whole issue.

@antares

@fluxed ... Democrats in Congress failed to make bump stocks illegal.

Let's call them out for their inaction, let's hold them accountable.

@steter SCOTUS is handing out bump stocks? Where do I get mine?!

But no, that's not at all what happened.

The people we elect to Congress, and keep reelecting, wrote a law such that bump stocks were legal. And we reelected them anyway.

We should stop reelecting morons.

We should not let them escape accountability by blaming the courts for their own actions in office.

@BohemianPeasant extreme?

The recent court rulings simply said that presidents have to follow the laws.

Heaven forbid!

Trump broke the law, and SCOTUS called him on it. That's not exactly the sky falling.

@jay_chi what actually happened is worse than that.

Trump didn't sign a bill that made bump stocks illegal, and that's the whole problem. Instead, Trump acted without legal authority, so Trump himself acted illegally against gun rights.

We need to be pointing that out everywhere we can.