I'm not pretending to know what happened. But generally, something would have to go wrong in order for him to successfully kill himself - if a monitored camera feed is functioning normally, it's awfully hard for someone to get enough privacy to hang themselves. The fewest variables are if Epstein was going to kill himself and was going to keep trying until he succeeded. The rest might just be survivorship bias; of course something went wrong, because the only way it was going to happen is if something went wrong.
If everything was working right someone repeatedly trying to kill themselves would stay on suicide watch, where Epstein should have been anyway. If the cameras were constantly monitored and one of them malfunctioned shouldn't someone have gone to the cell to fix it/check up? In any case I bet a lot of 'constantly monitored' cameras really aren't, and employees with jobs like that bring books in, or fucking around on their cell phone most of the shift. People aren't wired to stare at screens they aren't interacting with for those kinds of time lengths. If Epstein did do it himself I wonder why they didn't have monitor boy conveniently take a shit break during the deed, a superior need to have a chat with him at that moment, or something like that. I guess your theory is still plausible, but I think there's plenty to suspect foul play, regardless of whether it was Epstein or someone else. The one thing I would leave up in the air though is that the media is just fucking up a lot of their reporting, which they have a history of doing. Is that camera malfunction even verified? I've seen the other details get covered directly by the major outlets, but this one seems to be just spinning around the internet.
Barr is going to end up blocking the autopsy results and sealing the record on Epstein. They’re not even trying anymore.
Those have been around for a while. The NFA is a joke. Make a regulation, someone will find a way around it. I can’t take them seriously based on what they’re doing with suppressors. There’s a new drop-in trigger that just came out, completely NFA-compliant. What it does is it fires a round when you pull the trigger back, and then fires another round when you release it. So technically it’s still just one round per trigger pull, since releasing it is apparently a separate action? It basically enables rapid fire, or close to it, for about $5-600 and some intermediate gunsmithing and/or paying a gunsmith to do it for you. There’s a legitimate use for this in sporting events like 3-gun and some hunting scenarios, but it’s still laughable how they worked around the regulation and with the NFA’s approval. While again, the NFA is being a bitch about something — suppressors — that could drastically reduce instances of tinnitus and hearing loss if it didn’t take doing the hokey pokey for a year and a few month’s rent just to buy one. Reality is, SBRs - short barreled rifles, which require a tax stamp - are impractical. If you use a rifle-caliber pistol as one by shouldering the brace, you are doing so illegally. Though that legality might just be in semantics, it still stands. And for a few inches of barrel length more, you get an actual rifle that is worth a damn because it’s accurate beyond 50 feet or so. SBRs and rifle caliber pistols don’t have the barrel length to burn off all the powder in the cartridge nor do they have the barrel length required to get enough spin, and thus stability, on the round. They’re a niche range toy that’s only useful for CQB in the military, looking tacti-cool to your friends, and possibly home defense in some scenarios (though I’d prefer a pistol or shotgun in that case).
Anyone else following that the Russians may have accidentally nuked themselves? Looks like there is evidence of a nuclear explosion in Russia, with radiation spikes all around the area of suspicion. It’s also the location where the US suspects they were developing their nuke-tipped Skyfall cruise missile.
I’m watching it. My rule for them is whatever they openly admit to, the reality is probably way worse.
According to the ATFs last ruling pistol braces can be shouldered without being illegally used. Rumor is Trump already directed them to reverse this like they did with Bumpstocks. People will have to go back to those lame looking buffer tubes or just getting a tax stamp. 300 blackout suppressed, subsonic ammo, in an sbr would be a perfect home defense gun.
I just got a .308 and under suppressor last week and I had to wait a year for it. Sure wish I would've had this thing in Baghdad, I'd still have decent hearing in my right ear. Every rifle should come with one. But, thanks to people who think action movies are real, suppressors are looked at like they're a magic tube that makes guns twice as lethal.
It would be a truly impressive fuck up if they did. The science behind criticality and bomb design has been known for decades, and most of the work on advanced weapons has been on the delivery mechanism. I suppose they could have been fucking around with a new warhead design in an attempt to miniaturize it, but that should make it even harder to go critical.
Reading more into this, the speculation is that the cruise missile is nuclear powered, which is interesting, and also sounds slightly horrifying. Trump also tweeted about it (of course he did), and in that tweet he either revealed the existence of incredibly classified US weapons capability, or just outright made shit up about the US having such capability, which is in some ways worse.
I mean, saying we have more advanced tech is hardly revealing classified information. But yeah, it sounds like it’s nuke-powered, which somehow reacted and blew up. They tried saying that it was a reactor explosion somewhere, which is *technically* true, but typical Russian bullshit. The other insane story this week is Hong Kong. The protestors took over the airport, more or less, and they canceled all flights to and from there. Some protestors are flying the American flag, which I’m sure makes the Chinese boil.
On this particular issue it's a technology we supposedly gave up pursuing decades ago. We looked into it in the 60's and basically concluded it would be a Chernobyl with wings. To come out and say "actually, we have them, and ours work" would be a huge leak. Yeah, HK is about to pop. China has troops and armor lined up and the state media is working overtime vilifying the protests.
Very interesting article on mental health and gun violence. https://time.com/5645747/gun-violence-mental-illness/
What I find interesting is that they don't talk about what the potential causes of mass shootings are. They also don't say that the shooters do NOT have mental health issues, just that there is no official link or study that links the two. I think the author of that piece is trying to point out that just because you have mental health issues, it doesn't mean you're going to go do a mass shooting... even to the point where they state that people with mental health issues are more likely to be the victim of crime. Well, that is not at all related to those that perpetrated that crime, it's meant to build empathy for those with mental health issues. Which is an understandable counter-point coming from someone who deals with patients with mental health issues, none of whom (statistically) are mass shooters. That article seems like it's trying to get people to believe that mass shooters don't have such problems, but man, do I ever refuse to believe that. It is not at all normal for someone to go in and mow down a Walmart with an AK. I would LOVE to see even a single report or study that says a mass shooting perpetrator didn't have any mental health issues.
They ignore that “mass shootings” in the typical term, which we discussed pages ago, most are related to criminal activity, re:gangs. For the mass shootings where the shooter is randomly killing to rack up the highest body count it’s hard to ignore that a majority of them are severely mentally disturbed. These events, which are the impetus of the whole national conversation, have mental illness as a staple. So in that sense of the term it is a problem. It can be tackled without stigmatizing mentally Ill. Tackling mental illness issues as a whole in this country would be a net benefit no matter where the conversation started.
Yeah, Im not buying that article either, its really light on any meaningful data. The whole thing could be summed up as, "Just be careful of the fallacy of composition when talking about gun violence and mental health."
Several years ago, the term "going Postal" came into use. Because, USPS employees would flip out over a boss dispute, losing their job, or some office romance issue. Them shooting up the place was a crime of passion, so to speak, and wasn't really thought of as them being mentally disturbed. Non premeditated. They weren't posting on message boards about killing or whatever ahead of time. I can see that, just being so mad, you want to shoot up something, and not being classified as crazy. But, when you plot it out, take multiple rounds and guns, and drive somewhere for a distance and all that? Yeah, you need help. That's the type of person that gun control would have no impact on. They're going to go round up some fertilizer or a crock pot or whatever and do their damage regardless of access to firearms.