First of all they are innocent. A) our criminal Justice system is based on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law and b) in case you missed it in my comment, I am referring to a case where a car owner comes up and sees someone near their car and THINKS they are thieves despite the fact that they are not. If I drop my keys and they roll under your car for example. In this case they definitively ARE innocent in every sense of the word.

I have seen plenty of videos of the use of deadly force. How about the one where a police officer shot a kid holding a pear because he thought it was a grenade? There are plenty of videos of people being killed because the person with a gun THOUGHT they were in danger but they either due to a lack of training or just the fact that humans are fallible, jittery idiots on the whole, are capable of making split second mistakes, Including “trained” individuals. And given the current “training” required to be a gun owner is a power point presentation, a multiple choice test and firing a couple rounds in a gun range, I wouldn’t exactly consider that adequate training. You can claim you want gun owners to be better trained for real world situations, fine I can agree with that, but you cannot deny that they currently ARENT and taking woefully untrained people and allowing them and even encouraging them to use firearms in real world situations will, inevitably, lead to them making incorrect assumptions and decisions and will, inevitably, lead to them causing the deaths of innocent people. So I ask again, how many catalytic converters is worth an innocent persons life?

How many catalytic converters is an innocent persons life worth?

I have actually fired a gun before, more than a few times which is why I am so disturbed by your idea of allowing and encouraging people to treat petty theft as a threat on their life.

You claim the majority of gun owners would fire until the 100% knew the situation but when you have a gun in your hand and you see someone doing something sketchy, you don’t know what they’re doing, your adrenaline starts kicking in, you start shaking, then stand up suddenly, you don’t know if they have a weapon, you hat do you do? I’m your magical world you claim every gun owner would take the time to do a threat analysis of to determine the exact situation but since we’re not all super genius Sherlock Holmes types who can take in all the evidence and calculate the proper course of action in a split second, people will have to make a snap decision.

When untrained people are making snap decisions with a gun in their hands, innocent people WILL die. Maybe it won’t be you that does it, maybe your too good for that, but someone else will. How many catalytic converters is worth an innocent persons life?

Or we could create legislation to go after the legitimate business which are accepting the stolen catalytic converters (which is currently a legal grey area) and stop the problem at its source, while also forcing car insurance companies to cover stolen converters if they don’t, instead of making petty theft a death a sentence that can be meted out without a judge or jury, ya know since we are a country laws and have advanced past a lawless hellscape where people can murder each other for perceived slights.

The biggest problem with your plan though? I’m walking next to your car and I drop something. I roll over and try to fish my whatever out from under your car. You come out of your house and see me rooting around under your car. If we start giving people the ability to respond to perceived theft with deadly force there will be PLENTY of idiots who see me looking for my chapstick or whatever and shoot first and ask questions later because they assume they already know the situation.

So what’s you’re plan, just sit in your car with a shotgun 24/7? Put an IED strapped ti your catalytic converter?

It really comes down to your price range. This area of CT has a wide range of housing costs, and you will get what you pay for.

Mystic has a lot of nice restaurants and some sort of a night life but it’s incredibly expensive and gets mobbed by tourists in the summer.

Waterford is pretty non-descript, has some nice areas and some eh areas but it’s all just various levels of suburbia.

Groton is basically Waterford but not as nice, albeit more affordable and with more strip clubs / strip malls. If you go to the Noank part of Groton it’s nicer, more quintessential coastal New England, but stupidly expensive but without the restaurants/nightlife that mystic has.

East Lyme is basically Waterford but a little nicer.

Stonington is nice, lots of large properties there so lots of privacy. Stonington by the water (stonington borough) is quite nice but basically it’s mystic with fewer restaurants. Pawcatuck, which is part of stonington, is more affordable and is pretty close to westerly RI right across the border which is a super cute little town.

If you’re willing to go inland there’s more affordable towns but they start getting a bit more rural.

New London has a lot more going for it than most people around here are willing to admit. It has a decent stretch of bars on bank street and some pretty good restaurants. It has some less nice sections of it certainly but people talk about it like you’re going to get shot or robbed or something when in reality its just where most of the black people in the tri-town area live (gasp) so people talk a lot of shit about it.

Campaign finance reform. Or even better, make all campaign funding illegal. There are half a dozen state sponsored debates between candidates, televised of course, that’s it. All other forms of campaign advertising are illegal.

Unironically yes, give a living salary to people who are used to having to work for a living to allow them to represent their constituents. They have had to actually live paycheck to paycheck, had to go without, and they would be the most likely to represent faithfully the people who have had to live the same life, because they know how much it sucks. Otherwise you get someone who thinks nothing needs to be done to help the poor because they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and maybe consider having their housekeepers come half as often if they are having trouble paying their bills (in case this needs saying, most working class people don’t have housekeepers so this is an out of touch perspective.)

Wow. That’s a lot to unpack there. First of all I said “not independently wealthy enough to take off work for several years” and you heard “poor people”. Second of all, the assumption that poor people are inherently less intelligent or capable than more wealthy people is simply not correct. Lastly, we’re not talking about running any business, we’re talking about running a government and those are not the same. Hell, if we’re talking about basic finances I’d rather trust someone that can stretch a small amount of money further (one of the dirty poors) than someone used to just throwing money at a problem to solve it

Let’s follow that train of thought though. We could minimize our government to an extent but to completely abolish it would create utter chaos so regardless we need SOME level of government and politicians. By keeping politics as a volunteer or incredibly low paid position, because it’s a “privilege to serve”, we are making it so that the only people who do not have to work a 9-5 to pay their bills, i.e. the wealthy, are ABLE to get involved in politics. As it stands if I, a working class stuff, were to get involved in politics I would likely have to quit my job, try to live on the salary provided for the duration, and then cross my fingers my job is there waiting for me in a few years. Meanwhile a multimillionaire can just go for it because he doesn’t have those same worries. Lowering or removing salaries for politicians would actually increase corruption because IF a working class person got elected they would almost have to sell out to corporate interests just to make ends meet.

That’s exactly the point. You or I COULDNT live our lives in politics because we don’t have other sources of income. The current system makes it so that those who can afford to become a politician are those who are already wealthy, while those of us working schlubs would go bankrupt trying to do a stint in politics. By increasing pay for politicians to a livable level, we can make it so that the working class will be able to become involved in politics and would therefore give more of a voice to their fellow workers.

….right because those getting involved are retirees or independently wealthy which is the exact point OP made. You get that right?

So your solution is to make it HARDER for regular people who aren’t corrupt/ overly self interested to become a part of politics? That’s like solving a gunshot wound by shooting yourself again to dislodge the first bullet.

…..dude you’re beyond help. It hasn’t. First of all, it’s not a life it’s a fetus, it’s not a life until its born, read your bible. Besides, No one is getting an abortion for funsies. No one is doing it casually. And the absolute best method to prevent ever considering have to get it is not getting pregnant in the first place using birth control methods.

I know responding to you is a lost cause but I’ll do it anyway. You of course realize that ready access to birth control drastically decreases the number of abortions because you don’t have to abort a pregnancy if you never get pregnant in the first place?