Posts by Angus Robertson
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Just found out the country with the tightest gun control laws in North America is Mexico.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Your understanding on US Constitutional law is mistaken. It simply doesn't work like that.
Only a select few Americans (vetted by the ATF) are allowed to buy a full-auto machine guns.
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I guessing that saying “here’s the DATA!” isn’t working for you.
American violent crime rates are going down.
American gun-ownership is either holding steady or going up.
This gun debate might just be an irrelevent media beat-up, where a tradegy is being transformed into a trend by a group of ratings driven talking-heads. Not that that could ever happen in American media.
PS. - American non-believers are increasing in number and this suggests less religion equal less crime.
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Hard News: This is Your TV on Drugs, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Like gay marriage rights vs. DOMA.
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The difference is now moot. On the first Tuesday of November, Amendment 64 to the state constitution passed by referendum: legalising, taxing and regulating the possession and cultivation of cannabis by adults. That’s the next series sorted, then.
Interesting to see what the DEA does.
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Hard News: Switched on Gardener: to what…, in reply to Russell Brown,
But how on earth does Operation Lime alter that?
By opening lines of enquiry into the activities of the SOG customer base. Who are perhaps older, richer and paler.
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Hard News: Switched on Gardener: to what…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I rather think that the police exercising "leverage" on people to "cooperate" is pretty much the kind of undesirable behaviour we're talking about.
Cannabis use is a voluntary and mostly victimless activity. Hardly anyone involved is going to cooperate with the police willingly. But cannabis use is illegal and therefore our police have to take action.
If this sort of leverage can't be made to work we end up only prosecuting for cannabis those people who commit other crimes (mostly poor people) and who are then found to be involved in cannabis. Without this sort of approach we will be letting the richer parts of society commit cannabis crimes almost without consequence.
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Hard News: The Public Address 2012 Word…, in reply to MeToo,
Word of the decade: meh.'
+ 1
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They both look capricious and arbitrary.
They look a sight less capricious when they were deigning not to prosecute this cannabis support industry, because umm...
... Operation Lime has been a humiliating failure. Fourteen branches of Switched On Gardener continue to trade, as they had done for years before the investigation. If there was an interruption of any kind to the illicit supply of cannabis, it went unnoticed.
It is too early to tell.
The police have secured a number of convictions* against SOG staff (& owners), people who have supplied lots of equipment to cannabis growers. The police can now progress down the chain and go after the SOG customers. This could be the starting point for a large number of effective actions against cultivators of cannabis.
* If the organised criminal group prosecution had been successful this next step would have been easier, but the police probably still have enough leverage to get SOG employees to cooperate.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to mccx,
Wouldn't developing countries just say that the level of tax they levy should be deservedly less than that of developed countries?
Poor people should pay less burdensome taxation than rich people. As a tax rate governments would be free to set the rate.
The fairest solution would seem to be an equal per capita allotment of allowable emissions that at an aggregate level avoids dangerous climate change.
This will always be seen as unfair by the worlds poorer nations, because developed countries have a declining rate of emissions whilst developing countries have an increasing rate. A level cap places highest marginal costs upon the poorer group of nations to subsidise the technological advancement of the richer group - unfair.
A level cap is "fair", like a poll tax is "fair".