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Post by whemblycthulhu on May 13, 2019 15:33:19 GMT -5
Well, that's just like, one country, man . Weirdly, flamethrowers are the most commonly legal heavy weapon for civilians to own. Mostly because lawmakers just don't think of them and the fact they have a fair amount of utility outside combat. ...plus, they're ridiculously easy to assemble and use. Hell... a buddy of mine has one that's very similar to what you saw in WWI with a pressure tank. That thing went a good 25ft. We hated shooting that thing tho as it was so hot and scared shit out of us. He retired that thing and got something like this: @not HMBC: Is this still illegal where you're at?
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Post by Least censored on the planet! on May 13, 2019 17:11:10 GMT -5
Well that's surprising! What a weird world we live in ^^.
[edit]I have no idea to be honest
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CommieCanUCK
Ye Olde King of OT
The poster formerly known as feeder
Posts: 979
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Post by CommieCanUCK on May 13, 2019 17:18:29 GMT -5
A civil revolt armed with exclusively flamethrowers wouldn't be that hard to put down by conventional military.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2019 18:11:19 GMT -5
A civil revolt armed with exclusively flamethrowers wouldn't be that hard to put down by conventional military. Depends on terrain, but yes, exclusively, they're not a big a threat. Mixed in with conventional firearms, much bigger problem FIBUA.
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Post by easye on Mar 8, 2023 13:47:48 GMT -5
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Post by Peregrine on Mar 8, 2023 14:13:00 GMT -5
Can't say I'm surprised here. Regardless of the subject it's basic US Government 101 that federal law takes precedence over local law and federal courts really don't like it when you fail to show proper respect for their authority.
The more interesting question here is if the state will accept the ruling or if we're in "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" territory given how obviously partisan and lacking in integrity the court system has become. And when the law in question is a raving lunatic "NO LAWS NO MATTER WHAT APPLY TO MY PRECIOUS MAN-DOLLS" statement from the beginning the people behind it just might be tempted to test that theory.
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skyth
OT Cowboy
Posts: 328
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Post by skyth on Mar 8, 2023 14:30:35 GMT -5
Really depends on the specifics of the law. Article didn't go to much in depth about what it covers. I'm not too worried about states (Or smaller government units) not wanting to use resources to prosecute/enforce crimes that aren't crimes under only their local laws. Let the government entity where it's against the law take care of that. You don't want the local town government needing to be responsible for auditing Federal tax returns.
However, you can't interfere with the operations of the Federal enforcement and if there is a requirement to have some sort of database by the federal law, then the federal government should have access to that database. Also, the Federal government can tie access to funding for certain things to the states following certain directives.
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Post by Peregrine on Mar 8, 2023 15:31:38 GMT -5
I'm not too worried about states (Or smaller government units) not wanting to use resources to prosecute/enforce crimes that aren't crimes under only their local laws. Let the government entity where it's against the law take care of that. You don't want the local town government needing to be responsible for auditing Federal tax returns.
Where it crosses the line is that it's an active prohibition on assistance, not merely a refusal to help. A lower-level entity declining to assist federal law enforcement is ok and the federal government can not compel assistance but you have to stay out of the way, you can't actively interfere. The issue is that the Missouri law actively blocks state and local authorities from helping, even if they want to do so, which means the state is now obstructing federal law enforcement. To use your tax example, the IRS can not compel local police to go arrest someone the IRS suspects is guilty of tax fraud and collect all of the evidence from the suspect's house, but the state can not ban the local cops from saying "yeah, we've got nothing else to do today, we'll help you with that" or (as some more deluded politicians think they can do) ban federal law enforcement from coming into the state and arresting the suspected tax cheat.
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skyth
OT Cowboy
Posts: 328
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Post by skyth on Mar 8, 2023 16:15:31 GMT -5
Active prohibition on assistance is a a refusal to help from the State. It's the same thing. Not helping is not interfering. Now, if there is a law on the books the compels assistance, that is different - Though the enforceability of that may be questionable.
I know guns are a hot topic, but this could be applied to any other thing - Marihuana, for example, is still illegal at a Federal level. I don't really see this as any different from that or, for instance, Sanctuary Cities where the government refuses to assist Federal efforts to arrest undocumented people, which is likely the genesis of this law from Missouri.
The Federal government also has carrots and sticks to get the assistance in the form of grants. My job is with a state, but I mostly enforce Federal regulations. But that's due to the state receiving grants from the Federal government and enforcing these regs is a pre-requisite to the State receiving these grants.
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Post by Peregrine on Mar 9, 2023 1:30:33 GMT -5
Active prohibition on assistance is a a refusal to help from the State. Except the law goes beyond that. It isn't just a refusal by a state entity to provide assistance to federal law enforcement, it's a ban on local law enforcement cooperation. If your city cops want to help it's illegal for them to do so even though they're an entirely separate entity from the state government and have their own funding, their own employees, etc. And it's even a prohibition on future cooperation, if state cops at some future point decide to cooperate it would be illegal for them to do so. By making policy into law and giving it such a broad scope they're directly challenging federal authority and federal authority doesn't usually accept that kind of challenge. Weed is its own special thing that doesn't really compare to anything else IMO. Nobody wants to deal with the loss of support in anti-weed states from any national-level action to legalize it, nobody wants to deal with the loss of support in legal-weed states from trying to enforce federal drug laws against them. Everyone has just collectively decided that the whole legal issue doesn't exist at all and made it a de facto state-by-state issue. So there's this weird situation where technically it's states acting in defiance of federal authority but the federal authority is saying "we don't want this authority stop bothering us about it" and certainly not going to fight it in court. But that lack of desire to get involved doesn't really exist on other topics, and it certainly isn't the case here since the federal authority is taking it to court. It's a huge difference. The sanctuary city case is the local government directly saying "we won't help you". The Missouri law is state government telling local government "you aren't allowed to help them". That crosses the line from declining to spend their own resources helping federal law enforcement to actively blocking other entities from cooperating.
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skyth
OT Cowboy
Posts: 328
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Post by skyth on Mar 9, 2023 6:02:27 GMT -5
Generally higher level governments can pass laws saying that lower level governments can't do something. Take for instance, anti-discrimination laws. A state can pass a law that discrimination on the basis of sex or race is not allowed and lower level governments must abide by that.
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grog
OT Initiate
Posts: 60
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Post by grog on Mar 10, 2023 13:02:10 GMT -5
They could have a convention of states and ignore the federal government, which they would probably ignore back. Creates a weird situation; DeSantis peripherals talk of this as a good political stunt to force Dems in front if the camera defending something crazy like open borders.
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Post by Peregrine on Mar 10, 2023 13:28:03 GMT -5
They could have a convention of states and ignore the federal government, which they would probably ignore back. Creates a weird situation; DeSantis peripherals talk of this as a good political stunt to force Dems in front if the camera defending something crazy like open borders. I would love to see this, given the value of federal money going in and out of red states. Any bets on the over/under before the red states come back to the federal government, begging to be let back in before they suffer complete economic and social collapse? Generally higher level governments can pass laws saying that lower level governments can't do something. Take for instance, anti-discrimination laws. A state can pass a law that discrimination on the basis of sex or race is not allowed and lower level governments must abide by that. They can, but in this case they're doing so in defiance of an even higher authority. A state can pass the anti-discrimination law but it can't pass a law saying "even though federal law says you must discriminate you are not allowed to cooperate with that".
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skyth
OT Cowboy
Posts: 328
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Post by skyth on Mar 10, 2023 13:39:43 GMT -5
That isn't what they're doing though. There is no Federal law saying they must cooperate and give the Feds access to whatever resources they want. If there was a law of that sort, then there might be an issue (Though possibly runs into the issues with Constitutional powers granted to the Federal government).
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grog
OT Initiate
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Post by grog on Mar 10, 2023 14:59:24 GMT -5
peregrine>Red states What color are the counties eating that money and what color are the people lol? I’d give up all federal aid in a heartbeat to have our own laws, like it was intended. Not only that, if the aid was cut you’d have those people migrating to blue areas, two birds, one stone. The convention of states exists to decentralize power from a government that’s doing unconstitutional things. Would work with any attempted gun restrictions, in reality it’s probably just theatre.
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