Assault Weapons

Tsing Tao said:
Ok, so Canada's gun laws, word for word.

What do you believe this would do to the nearly 4 million illegally owned firearms in the United States? Do you believe the criminals would turn these in?

You are prepared to spend a few hundred billion dollars to buy back most of the guns you would not allow? you believe you would get that through Congress?
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Not to mention that there is really no such thing as "Buy Back" program as the firearms were never purchased from the federal government. It should be changed to "Liberty Disenfranchisement Assay"
 
piezoe said:
You left me with fairly easy questions to answer. Thanks.


No. But I also believe only a very small fraction of them are owned by criminals. So the idea is to get rid of most of them, so whenever the few that remain show up, and they will, they will be easy to spot.
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We need to reach an understanding on this first. You say you believe a small fraction of "illegally owned weapons" are owned by criminals. You think people who follow the law own guns illegally? By the way, this 4 Million illegally owned firearms is an FBI statistic. I can provide the source if you wish.


piezoe said:
first question: The money is no problem. We have already seen how easy it is to print 1.7 Trillion. So the money required is really chump change.

second question: No!, I don't think it would get through Congress. Even if Congress got rid of the Moscow Mitch filibuster and went back to the traditional filibuster rule, I still think it would be difficult to get enough Democrats to sign on to pass it. But I'd like to see us try.
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Ok, so just print the money. Didn't you, at one time, say that the Federal Reserve doesn't print money?
 
Tsing Tao said:
We need to reach an understanding on this first. You say you believe a small fraction of "illegally owned weapons" are owned by criminals. You think people who follow the law own guns illegally? By the way, this 4 Million illegally owned firearms is an FBI statistic. I can provide the source if you wish.
Ok, so just print the money. Didn't you, at one time, say that the Federal Reserve doesn't print money?
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OK.I have to accept that FBi number as probably the most authoritative. So (4 million)/(hundreds of millions) , the denominator is from your post. What shall we say it is-- do you have a somewhat reasonably active figure? Lets say it is 200,000,000, a conservative guess. then the fraction of illegal guns at present would be (4 E6)/2 E8) = 0.02 or 2% . I think I said it was a small fraction. I don't know, is 2% a small fraction?

So now if that's the fraction of guns that are illegal according to the FBI than what fraction of that two percent are owned by criminals? Maybe they are virtually all owned by criminals. I don't see how this changes anything. I thought these "assault style" guns with large magazine were legal! Am I wrong about that? If i'm not, what I meant was that most of the people that own these are not criminals and would comply with the law. Is that wrong?


Now to an embarrassment for me: " Didn't you, at one time, say that the Federal Reserve doesn't print money?

 Of Jesus, I said that. Can't deny it. And I couldn't have been more wrong! I appreciate you reading my posts -- from quite some time ago-- and your amazing memory. This was back before I became a very serious student of economics and in particular money theory. Here is exactly, and precisely, why I made that, to me now, horribly embarrassing mistake. I had argued that is was not "printing" in the Zimbabwe sense, because each printed dollar was tied to a borrowed dollar via a bond issued by the Treasury.

Here is what is terribly wrong about that argument. I have learned that when the Treasury issues bonds they are not borrowing but simply exchanging one type of Treasury liability, i.e., money, for another type of Treasury liability, i.e., an interest paying store of money -- a bond. Our government actually doesn't borrow at all!! The primary money creation step i.e., "printing" , takes place when the Federal reserve credits the Treasury's reserve account in excess of treasury receipts so that Checks drawn on the Treasury will clear. [there is one possibly, not certain yet, other step where money creation possibly takes place. This is something I'm working on right now with my economics professor and mentor, so stay tuned].

So this is what L. Randall Ray was referring to in his 1992 book, "Modern Money Theory," when he said the idea that the treasury spends in excess of its receipts and then borrows the difference by issuing bonds completely misunderstands "...the nature of government spending, taxing, deficits and bond sales."

The government does not borrow, but , yes, it appears to be borrowing, and there is no national debt. But this does not mean there are no constraints on spending. There are very definite constraints . This, however, explains -- how Japan can still function with seemingly astronomic "debt"; how the U.S. can spend trillions when a crisis arrives, etc. These are topics for the economics forum. I hope to post more in that forum soon enough.
 
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piezoe said:
OK.I have to accept that FBi number as probably the most authoritative. So (4 million)/(hundreds of millions) , the denominator is from your post. What shall we say it is-- do you have a somewhat reasonably active figure? Lets say it is 200,000,000, a conservative guess. then the fraction of illegal guns at present would be (4 E6)/2 E8) = 0.02 or 2% . I think I said it was a small fraction. I don't know, is 2% a small fraction?

So now if that's the fraction of guns that are illegal according to the FBI than what fraction of that two percent are owned by criminals? Maybe they are virtually all owned by criminals. I don't see how this changes anything. I thought these "assault style" guns with large magazine were legal! Am I wrong about that? If i'm not, what I meant was that most of the people that own these are not criminals and would comply with the law. Is that wrong?
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I'm not sure I understand what the hell you're on about here. The point is that criminals are going to be the ones with illegal firearms. Its not that the firearm design is illegal, it is that it is owned illegally. Meaning it didn't go through a background check, etc. Bad guys do this.

So how will you get those off the street? The fact that it is a small percentage of the overall population of firearms is a point for the side of NOT confiscating guns. Since you would be confiscating (or buying back, lets stick to one vernacular) only the legally owned guns which by and large don't cause the crime.

So how would you get the illegally owned ones?

piezoe said:
Now to an embarrassment for me: " Didn't you, at one time, say that the Federal Reserve doesn't print money?

Of Jesus, I said that. Can't deny it. And I couldn't have been more wrong! I appreciate you reading my posts -- from quite some time ago-- and your amazing memory. This was back before I became a very serious student of economics and in particular money theory. Here is exactly, and precisely, why I made that, to me now, horribly embarrassing mistake. I had argued that is was not "printing" in the Zimbabwe sense, because each printed dollar was tied to a borrowed dollar via a bond issued by the Treasury.

Here is what is terribly wrong about that argument. I have learned that when the Treasury issues bonds they are not borrowing but simply exchanging one type of Treasury liability, i.e., money, for another type of Treasury liability, i.e., an interest paying store of money -- a bond. Our government actually doesn't borrow at all!! The primary money creation step i.e., "printing" , takes place when the Federal reserve credits the Treasury's reserve account in excess of treasury receipts so that Checks drawn on the Treasury will clear. [there is one possibly, not certain yet, other step where money creation possibly takes place. This is something I'm working on right now with my economics professor and mentor, so stay tuned].

So this is what L. Randall Ray was referring to in his 1992 book, "Modern Money Theory," when he said the idea that the treasury spends in excess of its receipts and then borrows the difference by issuing bonds completely misunderstands "...the nature of government spending, taxing, deficits and bond sales."

The government does not borrow, but , yes, it appears to be borrowing, and there is no national debt. But this does not mean there are no constraints on spending. There are very definite constraints . This, however, explains -- how Japan can still function with seemingly astronomic "debt"; how the U.S. can spend trillions when a crisis arrives, etc. These are topics for the economics forum. I hope to post more in that forum soon enough.
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First, I appreciate you admitting error. That is rare these days. Second, I recall having these very arguments with you back in the Bernanke days when you were claiming they weren't printing, that's why I remember it. It is great you are now a "very serious student of economics" and lets hope you'll continue to learn more about the danger the Fed represents.
 
Tsing Tao said:
only the legally owned guns which by and large don't cause the crime.
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I think this is probably believed by many to be true but is probably wrong. We need to discuss this.

Tsing Tao said:
hope you'll continue to learn more about the danger the Fed represents.
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Can you specifically say what you think that "danger" is?
 
piezoe said:
I think this is probably believed by many to be true but is probably wrong. We need to discuss this.
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I thought we were doing just that. Waiting for you.

piezoe said:
Can you specifically say what you think that "danger" is?
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Sure. How about the suppression of risk metrics? How about the inflation of asset prices? Bubbles in general? Misallocation of capital? Overleverage.

You know, stuff that brings down financial markets and then takes down the greater economy.
 
In the photo below, numerous Assault Weapons are being employed. In this case they are Assault Arms with an unlimited supply of ammo. Let's ban all human Assault Arms and unlimited snow.
upload_2021-3-31_9-37-30.png
 
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