It is not only rare but a red flag if you can drink like a 21 year old in your 30s and 40s. If you can drink like that in your 50s you probably have ascites.

But what about prohibition era gangsters smuggling guns cigarettes and liquor? How will we fight that scourge?

I prefer the term idiot savante

Are you a bot?

Sure but OP said 200 years ago.

Because when talking about the economics of specialty outdoor products in the US market you have to recognize that manufacturing for most US consumer products is in China. Settle down

Ah. My point was not to say that mass shootings are strictly because of advancements in firearm technology. Anyone who thinks it’s not multifactorial is a moron. But anyone who thinks the underlying technology isn’t fundamentally required for the phenomenon to occur is also a moron.

I was only responding to the fact that OP said 200 years, and just from a practical perspective 200 years ago you just couldn’t do a mass shooting. If you ask me why we didn’t have mass shootings in the 50s through 70s that’s a different question that actually gets to the point of the matter. 200 years is such a long timeframe as to be silly. Might as well ask why people didn’t send bulk emails in the 20s.

Not sure the point you’re making…

ellipses are vague…

how the hell are you going to shoot a big bunch of people with a musket?

I don’t understand the sarcasm here. My comment was perfectly relevant to the OPs question. Yours sounds condescending. Are you being condescending? Because that’s not very nice. I eat the rude.

I put it to you that $100 buys more bike in China than it does in the US.

The answer is economy of scale, the collapse of the American manufacturing industry, bloated budgets, especially brand/marketing budgets, and the prices set by OEM manufacturers who themselves have bloated budgets. A lot of these brands arent actually manufacturers but middlemen for manufacturers. They do design, service, marketing and maybe assembly. But manufacturing is primarily done overseas. If it’s manufactured domestically the labor and material costs are commensurate. Maybe the frame is made domestically, maybe not.

A perfectly decent bicycle is less than $100 in China.

SIMPLE?

by all means, go right ahead. lol

I think at the high level it’s the military industrial senatorial complex, the deregulation and reagonomics under Republicans, the neoliberalism under democratic, globalization, de-industrialization, the modern banking/credit system, the modern media complex, and personalized engagement algorithms… Downstream of that is a high rate of poverty, debt, illiquidity, a poor healthcare system, reliance on jobs for affordable healthcare, a lack of access to robust mental health treatment, modernization of weaponry, a radicalized and angry society, collapsing social cohesion, division along small tribal lines, lacl of patriotism, and upregulation of the average amygdala. Downstream of that you have homelessness, addiction, mental health crisises, violence, suicide, murder, and the institutional inertia that makes these intergenerational problems.

Yes, we need a multifactorial approach to all of these things both acute and chronic. It isn’t as simple or as possible to get rid of the guns, but we can increase gun laws. We could require training of all citizens, we can give a budget to support red flag law enforcement, we can give the alcohol and tobacco regulation to the FDA, and let at the ATF focus on firearm enforcement, or roll it in to the secret service or fbim We can make healthcare free. We can spend a fuckton of money on it. We can raise the minimum wage. We can actually govern the economic policy rather than outsourcing it to the Fed, and focus on demand-side instead of supply -side economic solutions, pay for college, guarantee a living wage and housing.

But not with most of the Republicans in the way and the lobbyists at the ear of our representatives.

We need a modern Robespierre. A charismatic leader to lead the public by uniting them rather than dividing them, who will make such massive changes that they’ll come for his head.

The number one reason for bankruptcy in the USA is due to medical debt.

We just go into debt, is your answer.