it’s just we reached herd immunity

What? No we didn’t.

Federation only duplicates stuff an instance’s users subscribe to, so if you’re a single user instance it wouldn’t copy anything you don’t see (if you actually vet your subscriptions and regularly view their content).

Militias aren’t government controlled. That’s the whole damn point. You regulate them if they’re doing dangerous stuff like practicing next to a school, but you can’t do things that are effectively preventing them from existing.

For your questions on hunters and ownership and whatever, there’s a difference between constitutionally protected and legal. States can say hunting with guns of various types (you’ll note there are restrictions). You don’t need the constitution to make something legal and it not being constitutionally protected doesn’t make it illegal. States can legalize or restrict firearms for anything that does not prevent the citizenry from forming a well-regulated militia. Having your guns locked up and disassembled when not in use in training doesn’t prevent you from forming an effective(-ish) militia so DC vs. Heller was badly decided (5-4! it was a contentious decision split along political lines).

All the other weapons are arms too and if owned for the purpose of militia service, should be legal. If not, states can decide which weapons are appropriate for which purposes. Texas can decide cowboys were super cool and everyone should have a mandatory six shooter while peaceful Hawaii can decide guns are good for hunting pigs and bad for going to the beach. And if we decide we want to change one or the other, that’s our business, because the government can regulate things that don’t involve preventing the citizenry from rising up against it.

You’re arguing that the EC’s unfairness is unimportant, not that it’s fair. And ignoring the senate imbalance where just a couple extra votes is a massive change.

So since it’s unimportant, let’s change it to be fair. Except I don’t think you really feel it’s unimportant and actually care very much about those two extra votes.

Ignoring the inexplicable diversion into the Constitution’s applicability to states.

You keep arguing against a straw man (no ownership) rather than the actual point (no absolute right to free carry/use). You can have an individual right to own weapons for the purpose of being a part of a militia without having an inherent right to use those weapons for other purposes.

As to the “bear arms” it’s still in the context of a militia. You can’t be arrested for being in a militia. You and your buddies can march around, showing that you’re ready to rebel against an oppressive government, but that doesn’t mean YOU can individually walk down Main Street firing into the air. There’s a prosocial and political benefit from the citizenship being able to rebel, there isn’t one for having random people be constantly armed for resolving personal disputes.

it’s still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC

LOL, wut? There’s nothing arguable about that. Republicans very definitely have an unfair senate and electoral advantage entirely related to being more popular in less populated states (which, with the notable exceptions you’ve highlighted, tend to also be more rural).

You’re cherry picking top ten and bottom ten like the whole swath of states in between don’t also have unfair allocation and thus don’t matter, while being pretty inconsistent with your battleground state definitions to suit your sorting needs (NH is blue because it only voted R once in 30 years, while every battleground you listed has the same history, and red Florida and Ohio have been 50/50).

While your point about population vs. density is correct, everything else seems to be trying to muddy the waters about the EC rather than just point out an interesting factoid or offer a pedantic correction. There’s no serious argument that the EC isn’t unfair from an individual voter perspective and biased toward one side from a national perspective.

If the Second Amendment was clear in its individual right to bear arms for personal protection (a much different thing from just owning guns), then it wouldn’t have taken until 2008 for it to be recognized, and anyone pretending the Second Amendment is a clearly worded amendment with broadly agreed on meaning is just delusional.

Easy:

1. Vote in better Democrats
2. Abolish the filibuster
3. Pass law changing the number of justices on the court

Support from the legislature is all that’s important. If the justices say “you can’t do it”, then ignore them because clearly they can. The constitution says very little about the supreme court and its size has been changed multiple times before. This is just doing history again.

Hawaii isn’t in the ten least populous states and Maine isn’t a blue state. It’s not a straight sort, but Republicans far and away benefit from the unequal representation of the Senate and Electoral College.

Or instead of giving up we could make court expansion and reform a litmus test in future Democratic primaries. And/or normalize the idea that judicial rulings need to be enforced by someone else and they too have agency.

Because allowing this to continue for much of our remaining lives is also decorum. We live in an unjust system, but it’s not just how life has to be for the next 30 years.

And nothing in the Bill of Rights says you have an individual right to constantly be armed for personal safety.

I can’t think of any at-risk group that has meaningful influence on gun legislation, but many of the groups propping up the Republican party have been convinced they are in mortal danger.

Though, frankly, I do find someone who thinks restrictions to carrying a gun at a beach in peaceful and multicultural Hawaii aren’t reasonable to be a bit of a nut regardless of whatever risks you have in your personal life.

Until 15 years ago, there wasn’t an individual right to bear arms, so talking about “the Bill of Rights” really just means “the Conservative Supreme Court”.

Yeah, the article says they increased pay and still weren’t getting enough drivers. So… do it again. You’ve already know the knob you need to turn to resolve your problems, you just don’t want to turn it any further. Especially not when you can throw money at what seems like corruption (incompetent consultants) instead.

Apart from the “why do you need it” question, the beach is specifically a place people often leave items that can’t be taken in the water unattended. Sure, legislators can write laws about how a gun must not be left unattended and gun nuts can swear up and down about how they would never do that, but they will. No matter how much you think “there’s a lot of people around” or “I’ll just be in and out” or “I’ll watch my stuff from the water”, thefts happen, and now a mundane occurrence has turned a supposedly (not really) “safe” and “legal” gun into one of those dangerous “illegal” guns they can’t be held responsible for.

We were perfectly happy with our gun laws, and they worked, and now fringe nutcases and a politically captured courts are telling us we can’t implement common sense restrictions because the nuts have a panic attack if they’re not constantly armed.

You seem to have an argument you want to present regardless of what the person you’re responding to said. They didn’t say it was greedy corporations, just that the Fed’s measures didn’t work.

And while the reduction from peak could be the Fed’s rates, there’s no reason to think it must be, as many of the proposed causes (supply chain disruptions, built up demand, pandemic stimulus) would all be expected to ease over time.

As for your chosen windmill, the studies pointing to price gouging suggest it’s related to a public expectation of prices increases allowing for gouging to piggyback on other causes for price increases. It’s not something the companies can just choose to do at a whim and only just now decided to be greedy, which means they might be pressured to reduce excess profit taking due to easing of any of the underlying factors or even just public sentiment.