[Rancid]

American sueing culture needs reforming if someone can sue for someone else trespassing and drowning given compensation should be given if their is fault within law

It does need reform. Dumb shit like this happens all the time in America. For example, let's say I hire people to work on my roof. If one of them falls and gets hurt, there is in fact the chance they can sue me. This is why we have to carry liability insurance for our properties, to deal with shit like that.

It's a scam, and I bet you insurance companies and law firms are responsible for these shitty rules that let people sue for whatever.

[Rich]

Those are all rather dumb arguments if you think about it. You've done better rants.

That's a shame, I thought it was one of my better ones, but what ever its aesthetic / presentational qualities its not one that's going to go away. The key is to see the unity over the different issues. The hypocrisy of the liberal elite. And the Liberal elite includes the British Royal family, even the Queen has now joined in on the moral lecturing over COP26. They give us moral lectures while doing the opposite. So we see this with

Guns: They can have guns for work and play, but we can't. In Britain its even worse, they've come for our knives. Just a few weeks back we were chatting to a guy who got a criminal conviction, because he'd accidentally left in a work knife in his vehicle. Of course its fine for the Liberal parasites who impose these laws, rules and restrictions, most of them don't need heavy duty tools for work that can be used as weapons. This is why I tell my American friends, don't give the Liberals an inch on the 2nd Amendment. Guns aren't the end they're just the beginning.

Lockdowns and masks: We see how the Holywood elite love to gather without masks to congratulate each other on their virtuous "work",although they often make the servants at these events wear masks.

Power and Wealth inequalities: They buy Apple products and conspire in the expansion of closed source software and monopolies for face book, twitter, zoom, you-tube etc. Most of them are totally in bed with big tech.

Climate Change: nuff said for the moment.

[Potemkin]

That's a shame, I thought it was one of my better ones, but what ever its aesthetic / presentational qualities its not one that's going to go away. The key is to see the unity over the different issues. The hypocrisy of the liberal elite. And the Liberal elite includes the British Royal family, even the Queen has now joined in on the moral lecturing over COP26. They give us moral lectures while doing the opposite. So we see this with

Guns: They can have guns for work and play, but we can't. In Britain its even worse, they've come for our knives. Just a few weeks back we were chatting to a guy who got a criminal conviction, because he'd accidentally left in a work knife in his vehicle. Of course its fine for the Liberal parasites who impose these laws, rules and restrictions, most of them don't need heavy duty tools for work that can be used as weapons. This is why I tell my American friends, don't give the Liberals an inch on the 2nd Amendment. Guns aren't the end they're just the beginning.

Lockdowns and masks: We see how the Holywood elite love to gather without masks to congratulate each other on their virtuous "work",although they often make the servants at these events wear masks.

Power and Wealth inequalities: They buy Apple products and conspire in the expansion of closed source software and monopolies for face book, twitter, zoom, you-tube etc. Most of them are totally in bed with big tech.

Climate Change: nuff said for the moment.

We're all fucking hypocrites, @Rich. It's just more noticeable in the case of the Liberal elite because, well, they're the elite. It's their job to tell the rest of us what to do. Which, of course, already annoys us immensely, so any hypocrisy they display is just the fucking cherry on the top.

[Beren]

At a spontaneous press conference with the paparazzi following him Alec Baldwin suggests there's less than a one-in-a-billion chance of such an accident happening because so many bullets have been used in movie shootings. So while opposing them, Hollywood uses guns a lot, about which it's urgent to do something according to Alec. One of the paparazzi didn't know Halyna Hutchins' name, which made Hilaria Baldwin, who appears to be a bitch anyway, very upset.


https://www.tmz.com/2021/10/30/alec-bal ... -hutchins/

Stay tuned.

[MistyTiger]

American sueing culture needs reforming if someone can sue for someone else trespassing and drowning given compensation should be given if their is fault within law, not fault in lawlessness and Baldwin may be sued in any case not necessarily due to firing the gun but being part of the production team. I don't see fault in firing a gun if you are directed to do so if are led to believe the gun has blanks. The problem in this case is live rounds were on set, so someone is at fault here and that may well be the production team that Baldwin is part of.

I agree that American suing culture needs to be reformed quite a bit. Americans are too eager to sue others. Many judges favor the suing behavior so all the sue happiness just keeps going and going. It's just sick.

[Rich]

We're all fucking hypocrites, @Rich. It's just more noticeable in the case of the Liberal elite because, well, they're the elite. It's their job to tell the rest of us what to do. Which, of course, already annoys us immensely, so any hypocrisy they display is just the fucking cherry on the top.

I'm aware that you've made this point before. I'd like to give and it deserves a comprehensive response. However I'm a slow writer, so it may take a number of posts across different threads.

So I do believe fundamental hypocrisy can be avoided in a political / ideological context. Of course I could be deluding myself, but in part that's why we have political debate, to kind of test our propositions, even if its in a very haphazard and inefficient way.

Implausible as it may well sound to many posters, although no great socialite, I'm actually quite well liked off the forum. I was quite shocked not so long back, when someone said to me, this was in a context where there had been a lot of conflict, extreme back biting and low level politicking, "everyone says you're alright". However I never lose sight of my own selfishness. I'm in no doubt that I live my life in a more narcissistic fashion than the person who said this about me. I'm in no doubt that he makes far more real sacrifices in the services of others than I do.

So its most important that I'm not claiming some personal moral superiority. The posters with which I clash may well be better human beings in their personal life than me. I don't believe we need to become saints to have a productive politics. But I do believe that politics could be far more productive if it ceased to be a competition between (inevitably bullshit in my opinion) moral absolutisms and instead was recognised as a negotiation between competing selfish individuals and selfish groups.

[ingliz]

F.lli Pietta long Colt 45 revolver,

I am sure at first they said it was an antique 1851 Navy*. I can see how they made the error - The Navy and Army are so much the same, you can swap out the barrel and the cylinder from a .36 Navy fit them to a .44 Army and have a functional firearm - but the caliber is wrong.

They went out of their way to say it wasn't a replica but, if it was a single-action Navy in .45 Long Colt, it must be. This is not the case with an antique 1860 Army Conversion, first cobbled together by Colt in 1871**. Its barrel is machined with the same bore dimensions (.452" nominal) as the .45 Long Colt bore.

Why does this matter?

If it was a genuine antique, it makes his tale more believable, no less stupid but more believable.


* It would be an 1861 Navy Conversion with the round barrel.

** Smith and Wesson held the rights to the Rollin White patent for boring chambers completely through a revolver cylinder until 1869.

[Rancid]

Alec claim he never puled the trigger, but cocked it. I'm guessing he didn't actually cock it all the way back, and thus is slipped and fired?

[Beren]

Alec Baldwin won't be convicted for this, obviously, or he won't go to jail for it at least.

He won't even be tried in court.

Charges against Alec Baldwin dropped in fatal ‘Rust’ shooting, his attorneys say

Prosecutors had blamed the Oscar-nominated actor for the death of Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of the Western movie "Rust."

April 20, 2023, 9:31 PM CEST

By Diana Dasrath, Gisele Lamarre and David K. Li

Charges have been dropped against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his Western movie "Rust," his lawyers said Thursday.

The stunning announcement came 2 ½ months after New Mexico prosecutors filed involuntary manslaughter charges against the Oscar-nominated actor.

“We are pleased with the decision to dismiss the case against Alec Baldwin and we encourage a proper investigation into the facts and circumstances of this tragic accident,” Baldwin's lawyers Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro said in a joint statement.

The office of New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies declined comment to NBC News on Thursday.

The charges against Baldwin's co-defendant, "Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were still in play, her lawyers said Thursday.

[MistyTiger]

Oh darn. I was hoping to see coverage of him making a fool of himself in court. I guess he doesn't want to be the butt of jokes like Amber Heard.

I smell bribery.

[ingliz]

@Rancid

An FBI forensic report found that the gun used in the fatal shooting could not have been fired without pulling the trigger.

Almost everything you ever wanted to know about revolvers and how they work.

Hammer control can be found at 44.42.

[Tainari88]

It does need reform. Dumb shit like this happens all the time in America. For example, let's say I hire people to work on my roof. If one of them falls and gets hurt, there is in fact the chance they can sue me. This is why we have to carry liability insurance for our properties, to deal with shit like that.

It's a scam, and I bet you insurance companies and law firms are responsible for these shitty rules that let people sue for whatever.

That is a first world problem Rancid. Mexicans are never suing each other for jack shit. That is why the streets here and sidewalks are a walking hazard. No one sues the city or county in Mexico. In the USA you are sued for everything. People again have time and money for lawyers and lawsuits. Mexico most people absolutely hate suing because it is expensive and it takes years and months of your time. No one sues. No one gets jury summons, no one gets trials over shit. No one sues.

People do not realize that suing is about infrastructure. If you are in a nation lacking some administrative infrastructure, it will come out most commonly with two departments. Law enforcement and lawsuits. Crime being without any resolutions and lawsuits not being brought to a court system. The USA has abundant law enforcement that is well funded, and also well-funded courts except for a couple of areas like immigration and drug treatment courts. Underfunded for that.

Latin America in general has serious problems with law enforcement and with court systems. Way underdeveloped.

[wat0n]

That is a first world problem Rancid. Mexicans are never suing each other for jack shit. That is why the streets here and sidewalks are a walking hazard. No one sues the city or county in Mexico. In the USA you are sued for everything. People again have time and money for lawyers and lawsuits. Mexico most people absolutely hate suing because it is expensive and it takes years and months of your time. No one sues. No one gets jury summons, no one gets trials over shit. No one sues.

People do not realize that suing is about infrastructure. If you are in a nation lacking some administrative infrastructure, it will come out most commonly with two departments. Law enforcement and lawsuits. Crime being without any resolutions and lawsuits not being brought to a court system. The USA has abundant law enforcement that is well funded, and also well-funded courts except for a couple of areas like immigration and drug treatment courts. Underfunded for that.

Latin America in general has serious problems with law enforcement and with court systems. Way underdeveloped.

I don't think you can sue your city in the US if streets are in a bad state though.

Having said that, I would rather solve conflicts through the court system than by other means.

[Morgan Le Fey]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/21/entertai ... gfooterold

The gun was literally modified to fire without the trigger being pulled, which doesn't make any sense but does corroborate Baldwin's story. I personally can't stand the guy, and it was easy to believe this self-righteous ass killed a woman because he's too big a moron to understand the lethality of firearms, and yet I was simply wrong.

He's still a shitty human being, but he's not a murderer. He still should have personally checked the firearm for live rounds before handling it, but a modified firearm is too unpredictable to hold him responsible.

The Kops are reanalyzing the gun to determine what exactly was done.

[ingliz]

The gun was literally modified to fire without the trigger being pulled

Bollocks!

The replica pistol most likely had springs replaced to improve reliability - Pietta is notorious for the poor quality of its springs, an issue easily fixed with aftermarket replacements (Uberti, the other major player in the replica market, is known for short arbors causing cylinder gap issues, etc. which are a pain to make good).

So while the gun was almost certainly modified, it was not modified to fire without the trigger being pulled.

[ingliz]

This video shows how easy it is to fully disassemble an 1873 Colt Single Action Army with just a screwdriver (I know the Rust gun was a replica 1871 Richards-Mason 1861 Navy conversion, but the internals are the same, and it too can be taken down with a screwdriver).

Of course, if you replace the springs and don't replace worn parts, you are going to have problems. But in this instance, the FBI forensic report found that everything was working perfectly until the inertia discharge testing regime they used - hitting the hammer in the safety notch, half cock, and cocked position with a heavy mallet - broke two parts in the trigger assembly and locked up the action, rendering the pistol physically incapable of firing a round.

[Morgan Le Fey]

The article cites new evidence that was not known during the first examination of the weapon.

I'm just presenting the story, and revising opinion based on the facts being reported.

[ingliz]

@Morgan Le Fey

Rumour has it Hannah Gutierrez-Reed fitted a new trigger bolt spring. But seeing as any Bubba gunsmith can do that without fucking up, and the FBI said she didn't fuck up, I don't know why they dropped the charges.

Maybe it's because she wasn't a certified armorer, even though that was not a legal requirement to work on the film.

It doesn't help that the average American knows fuck all about guns.


* See Fitting the 1861 Navy Trigger Bolt Spring

[ingliz]

People have made the excuse that Baldwin is only an actor and, yes, it doesn't help that the average American actor knows fuck all about guns; but he knew he would be handling firearms on set, and a prudent man - NM Stat § 30-7-4 (2021) - would have learned the basics.