President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Australia banned 'em and now, 20 years later, has only ... an estimated one-third of what they started with.

 

Yes and no, Alma. Second amendment rights are a very big deal to many people in this country, and particularly to the people who own the most guns. There are three hundred million guns in the U.S. They'll be sold for cash without any records, or given to friends and relatives who do not have one. Try to take them all away and millions of them are going to be wrapped in plastic and buried, hidden in the attic, etc. The most that could be done about that is to make the penalties for gun crimes and accidents/suicides involving firearms completely draconian. I simply don't believe that such laws can get through Congress.

I hope for saner laws about background checks, mental health checks of gun buyers, safe locked storage of guns to try to prevent theft or access by children, banning high capacity magazines, things like that. We might eventually be able to get some of those through Congress, especially if enough of them get shot at. It is worth noting that whatever the status of the right to carry firearms in public is, they remain banned from courthouses, city halls, state legislatures, and the Capital building. I wonder why that is?

 

Donald Trump doesn't get the special counsel investigation. And he's never going to. - CNNPolitics.com

 

HIPAA protects health privacy, right? I thought that was the key objection of those who don't want mental health history associated with guy background checks, no?

 

The NRA is nothing but an advertising/marketing group for gun manufacturers. It made that case as a way to gin up sales for their clients.

 

Yes and no. Most of the abdominal organs that are like that, say the liver, kidneys, and spleen, are located higher up in the abdomen, just below the diaphragm. This bullet entered around the hip and my understanding is that it went through sideways, more or less hip to hip. That's primarily going to involve the large and small intestine and the urinary bladder. The biggest immediate risk would be hitting a large artery or vein and the patient bleeding out. That didn't happen. You can lose several feet of your small intestine with little effect, and a couple of feet of the large intestine as well. The biggest risk post-op would be peritonitis, a secondary infection inside the abdominal cavity from the intestinal contents leaking from a rupture. The surgeons would be aware of that and will have taken every precaution to prevent it from ever getting started while they were in there. If it does occur, it can be treated by reopening the abdomen and doing all that can be done to clean it again, possibly spreading antibiotic pellets inside, then closing and hanging badass antibiotics running through a big bore needle into a vein.

It could happen, hell, anything could happen post-op, but the percentages are that if he made it this far he has a pretty good chance of survival.

 

That's a very large drop, all things considered.

 

The Privacy Rule mainly aims to prevent unauthorized disclosure of medical information to third parties that could use it to deny other things, like mortgages. Or employment. Or guns.

 

Sure ... just offering up a bit of numerical perspective.

I'll say this about my Aussie friends ... they loves them some firearms. No trip to the US is complete without: A) one or more visits to a firearms-selling sporting goods store; and B) one or more visits to a shooting range. If they're in Vegas, they make it a point to go to some place that lets you shoot all sorts of crazy shit.

 

That's what I'm saying. I'm in favor of including mental health history review, in spite of HIPAA's privacy rules.

 

Right. That goes against the very intent of the privacy rule.

Not sure if you could amend it for just the mental health/gun issue, or if you'd need to repeal the whole thing, which would be a really bad idea, IMO.

 

Trump's indifference to Russia's election attack raises alarm