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Summary: The best scientific evidence indicates that anti-wind lobbyists raise health fears which increase massively the number of people living near wind turbine farms who get stress-related illnesses due to noise-related annoyance.17 major independent health studies all clear wind turbines of negative health impactsAilments are likely psychogenic in nature, not organic.Studies finding negative health impacts are flawed and performed by biased researchers.People are more annoyed by wind noise if they can see a wind turbine and aren't getting any money from its operation.People with negative atttitudes to wind and negative personalities in general report many more symptoms than people with positive attitudes and personalities.If there is a noise problem, interventions such as white-noise generators and ear plugs are extremely cheap and practical, yet negative studies suggest radical changes to policy and wind-turbine siting instead.1. Major independent health studies find no causative correlation between wind turbines and negative health impactsA major independent study [1] was commissioned and performed by Public Health Officers of Ontario. The study reviewed all available literature on wind health effects and associated disciplines including epidemiology and noise safety. The study concluded that some people living near wind turbines experienced heightened stress levels which caused related stress issues and that these issues had no physical basis.The review concludes that while some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, and sleep disturbance, the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects. The sound level from wind turbines at common residential setbacks is not sufficient to cause hearing impairment or other direct health effects, although some people may find it annoying.The Ontario government went further and had additional assessments and reviews [8] done recently:An expert report has concluded there is no direct health risk from wind turbine sound at Ontario's regulated setback distance.The study analyzed the latest findings on low frequency noise and infrasound from wind turbines. In addition, three experts in the field of noise, vibration and acoustics reviewed and validated the report.The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection just released a study by independent experts that reached identical conclusions:There is no evidence for a set of health effects, from exposure to wind turbines that could be characterized as a "Wind Turbine Syndrome.And this:None of the limited epidemiological evidence reviewed suggests an association between noise from wind turbines and pain and stiffness, diabetes, high blood pressure, tinnitus, hearing impairment, cardiovascular disease, and headache/migraineAnd finally this:Whether annoyance from wind turbines leads to sleep issues or stress has not been sufficiently quantifiedThese findings exactly mirror the results of a study [2] commissioned by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA). This study was performed by an independent panel of experts including Doctors, Ph.Ds and scientists who were experts in the fields associated with ailments associated with wind turbines. The study reviewed all available literature on wind turbines, noise health impacts, infrasound and reported health impacts of wind turbines. This study concluded that some people living near wind turbines found their presence stressful, and identified stress-related ailments unrelated to any physical cause.Following review, analysis, and discussion, the panel reached agreement on three key points:• There is nothing unique about the sounds and vibrations emitted by wind turbines.• The body of accumulated knowledge about sound and health is substantial.• The body of accumulated knowledge provides no evidence that the audible or subaudible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.2. 'Wind turbine syndrome' is a psychogenic illness without organic causesIn epidemiology and public health, there are concepts of psychogenic and sociogenic illnesses:Psychogenic illness: A constellation of symptoms suggestive of organic illness, but without an identifiable cause, that occurs between two or more people who share beliefs about those symptomsSociogenic illness: a medical condition that occurs to multiple individuals within a social group, but does not seem to have a common organic cause.Public health expert Dr. Simon Chapman, Ph.D. [10] and his team have done and are continuing to perform research that shows that wind turbine-related ailments are almost certainly psychogenic in nature. This excellent presentation [11] defines and presents examples of other psychogenic and sociogenic illnesses historical and current, assesses the 17 health studies world-wide [19] that found no causative correlation between wind turbines and health impacts and lists the over 200 ailments and negative impacts currently attributed to wind turbines worldwide by anti-wind campaigners and complainants.Why is 'wind turbine syndrome' most likely to be psychogenic?17 Reviews of Evidence (2002‐2012) – all negative- MANY symptoms & diseases attributed- Reports confined to webpages of opponents- Zero entries in PubMed for “wind turbine syndrome”The 200+ unique ailments blamed on wind farms would be entertaining reading -- vibrating lips at 10 km for example --, if it weren't so disturbing that so many people were willing to ascribe so many completed unrelated complaints to wind turbines. [18]3. Health studies supporting 'wind turbine syndrome' are deeply flawedAs most wind farm opponents tend to rapidly find material by authors such as Dr. Nina Pierpoint on "wind turbine syndrome" [4] , they inject statements about negative health impacts in local peoples' minds. These tend to amplify stress related to changes in their physical environment and concerns over real estate values. Note that Dr. Pierpoint's sample size was 23 direct phone interviews from people self-identified as suffering negative health impacts due to wind and assertions by those on the health impacts on an addition 15 people. From this skewed sample of 38, Dr. Pierpoint generated 60+ pages of charts and graphs on over a dozen symptoms associated with wind turbines. In other words, bogus statistics from what was at best anecdotal information from a self-selected sample. Similar studies have been performed with equally suspect methodologies that specifically queried individuals with a list of purported symptoms of "wind turbine syndrome" in egregious breaches of study design.[16]4. People are more annoyed by noise if they can see the wind turbine and aren't getting any money from itIt is very worth noting the findings [5], [6] of Drs. Frits van den Berg and Eja Pederson, Dutch wind energy impacts researchers. In one analysis, they had several hundred people answer a survey on noise annoyance due to wind, and included several other questions. They correlated the results and found that annoyance due to wind noise was very highly correlated to two factors: whether the person could see the wind turbine and whether the person was receiving any economic benefit from the wind turbine. In other words, people tended to find turbines that they could see noisier and more annoying than turbines that they couldn't see, and were annoyed if their neighbours were making money from them and they weren't. In a related study, they assessed the impacts of annoyance due to wind on people and found that it increased stress leading in some cases to loss of sleep and that in addition to the factors above, the unique characteristics of wind turbine noise made it more annoying to some people. This strongly supports the stress related hypothesis for health impacts and is worth understanding for wind turbine regulatory policy and wind turbine community engagement.5. People who dislike wind and have negative personality traits report many more symptoms than more positive peopleA UK study on people with negatively oriented personalities and their perception of wind noise and reporting of negative health impacts has been published.[17] A related study is under peer-review in ANZ.The studies build upon work already done around perception of noise and negatively oriented personality traits. The studies take into account the work done by Peders0n et al around wind farm noise annoyance and anecdotal reports of wind-related symptoms reported by Pierpont.The UK study modelled actual noise in dwellings using industry standard approaches. The study surveyed residents within three ranges of actual noise near the wind turbines. The study included questions from standard and proven questionnaires on negatively oriented personality traits.The study found:1. No correlation between actual noise and reported symptoms.2. Perception of noise was strongly related to negative attitudes to wind turbines, much more so than actual noise from wind turbines.3. A strong correlation between perception of noise and reported symptoms.4. A strong correlation between negatively oriented personality traits and reported symptoms.5. No relationship between attitude to wind turbines and actual noise; those who really could hear them more weren't disposed to dislike them more.These two graphs from the published, peer-reviewed UK study show the very strong correlation between negatively oriented personality traits and both perception of noise and reporting of symptoms. The simple way to read these is that the solid black line are people with negative traits, and the dotted line are people without those negative traits. The vertical axis is reported symptoms. The horizontal axis is perception of noise from the wind turbines (not actual noise).When the ANZ study is published, I will include its findings.6. Noise experienced by rural dwellers near wind turbines is much quieter than every urban dweller experiences all the timeIt is worth noting that the World Health Organization has published community guidelines on noise [7] intended to reduce health impacts. These guidelines call for 35 dba in bedrooms at night for best sleeping and have numerous other categories for schools etc. Anti-wind advocates point out that most wind turbine guidelines and regulations such as Ontario's Regulation 359/09 call for 40 dba in inhabited homes near wind turbines (translating into a 1500 m setback for more than one large wind turbine in the majority of cases) and use this as an argument against wind farm placement. Of course, wind turbine noise annoyance impacts a very small percentage of any populace mostly determined by psychological traits as shown above, and what is more interesting about the WHO guidelines is that no one living in a town of larger than 10,000 people has living conditions that adhere to them due to traffic noise, industrial noise, air traffic and the necessary machinery of cities. In summary, rural dwellers exposed to wind turbine noise are exposed to a much lower level of all forms of noise than city dwellers, yet the vast majority of city dwellers do not suffer significant adverse health effects or find it stressful. Those who do mitigate the impact with the use of sound proofing and white noise generators, and find other ways to subsume the stress.7. If wind turbine noise truly was causing loss of sleep, there are simple, cheap interventionsIf those concerned with wind turbine noise were truly focussed on health impacts, they would be promoting low-cost, effective noise annoyance reduction measures.For example, a white noise generator can be purchased for less than $30 USD. This provides masking noise which would eliminate any impact from nearby wind turbines. In fact, there's a free app for that. [12]Similarly, comfortable foam earplugs would also be reasonable interventions. These can be purchased in bulk for cents per ear plug. [13]There are many stress reduction and annoyance distraction techniques available with the click of a button on the internet. Most of these can be studied and practiced free of charge by anyone interested in dealing with ultimately trivial annoyances that they are over-focussing upon. [14]Finally, closing windows and installing quilted blinds would not only significantly decrease noise, but would also decrease light, improving sleep as well. [15]All of these techniques are in use today in households around the world to deal with traffic noise, sirens, airplane noise, noisy neighbours, nearby industrial works, streetcars, bird cannons and dawn tractor startups. Urban and rural dwellers depend on them to ensure a comfortable and uninterrupted sleep.By comparison, increasing setbacks of wind turbines by hundreds of meters is an extraordinary and societally expensive measure.That those concerned with health impacts only suggested interventions are greater setbacks for or complete elimination of wind turbines betrays their agenda. Their solution is vastly out of proportion to the problem.References:[1] The Potential Health Impact of Wind Turbines, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, May 20, 2010, http://health.gov.on.ca/en/common/ministry/publications/reports/wind_turbine/wind_turbine.aspx[2] http://www.canwea.ca/pdf/talkwind/Wind_Turbine_Sound_and_Health_Effects-Executive_Summary.pdf[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo[4] Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment, Nina Pierpont, K Selected Books, 2009, Amazon.com: Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment (9780984182701): Nina Pierpont: Books[5] http://umcg.wewi.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/pubs/2009/JAS0006341/JAS0006341.pdf[6] Noise annoyance from wind turbines - a review, Eja Pedersen, Högskolan i Halmstad, Report 5308, August 2003, http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Documents/publikationer/620-5308-6.pdf[7] http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/environment-and-health/noise[8] http://news.ontario.ca/ene/en/2011/12/expert-report-confirms-no-direct-health-effects-from-wind-turbines.html[9] Wind Turbine Health Impact Study: Report of the Independent Expert Panel, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Updated April 2012, http://www.mass.gov/dep/energy/wind/impactstudy.htm[10] http://www.amazon.com/Simon-Chapman/e/B001HOPVF2[11] http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/assets/pdfs/Other-Research/NZ-Conf1.pdf[12] http://simplynoise.com/[13] http://www.earplugstore.com/sleeping-ear-plugs.html[14] http://www.helpguide.org/mental/stress_relief_meditation_yoga_relaxation.htm[15] http://www.blindschalet.com/blinds.aspx?upgrade=sound[16] "Wind turbine syndrome" is more wind than syndrome[17] The influence of negative oriented personality traits on the effects of wind turbine noise, Jennifer Taylora, Carol Eastwicka, Robin Wilsonb, Claire Lawrencec, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 54, Issue 3, February 2013, Pages 338–343, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912004783[18] http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/assets/pdfs/publications/WindfarmDiseases.pdf[19] Full list of all Wind Health Reviews maintained by Professor Simon Chapman, School of Public Health, University of Sydney, http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/assets/pdfs/publications/WindHealthReviews.pdf[20] Wind Turbines, Noise and Health, February 2007, Dr Amanda Harry http://M.B.Ch.B. P.G.Dip.E.N.T., http://www.flat-group.co.uk/pdf/wtnoise_health_2007_a_barry.pdf[21] Effects of industrial wind turbine noise on sleep and health, Michael A Nissenbaum, Jeffery J Aramini, Christopher D Hanning, Noise and Health, 2012Additional Summaries and References:http://www.noiseandhealth.org/article.asp?issn=1463-1741%3Byear%3D2004%3Bvolume%3D6%3Bissue%3D22%3Bspage%3D5%3Bepage%3D13%3Baulast%3DIsinghttp://marg09.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/anti-industrial-wind-turbines-march-april-28-queens-park/#comment-1040http://marg09.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/anti-industrial-wind-turbines-march-april-28-queens-park/#comment-1071http://marg09.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/anti-industrial-wind-turbines-march-april-28-queens-park/#comment-1041http://marg09.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/anti-industrial-wind-turbines-march-april-28-queens-park/#comment-1042http://marg09.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/anti-industrial-wind-turbines-march-april-28-queens-park/#comment-1052http://barnardonwind.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/humans-evolved-with-infrasound-is-there-any-truth-to-health-concerns-about-it/http://masg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/NBarrett_Getting-the-Wind-Up_V2-June-2012.pdf

First off, art is not a good “investment”. People have invested - and do invest - in art, but it is not a good investment vehicle by any conventional investment criteria. And this is for many reasons.First, and most importantly, the art market is not transparent. The decisions that affect its movements are created by very small numbers of people acting for very obscure reasons, and no information or access to that data is available or possible.The marketplace as a whole is both effected and affected by a teeny-tiny group of art, art dealers and artists at the pinnacle. In 2016, 25 artists accounted for 44.6 percent - yes, almost half - of all contemporary art sales worldwide. Yet there are tens of thousands of artists working and selling within the marketplace.Forbes, arguably an expert in investment, published the results of a research article on art investment written by Arthur Korteweg, a finance professor at Stanford. The numbers people go by are indices of repeat sales, which he says, are hogwash.“The problem with those is that they assume that the paintings that don’t trade have a similar return to those that do trade,” according to Korteweg.…But they don’t.At play, says Korteweg and his research partners at Luxembourg School of Finance and Erasmus University Rotterdam, is a massive selection bias created by the dearth of information for the whole market. After analyzing 20,538 pieces, the researchers reached a simple conclusion: winners get resold, losers don’t. And as indices cull data from resales, they are skewed to make your chances look a lot more favorable than they actually are. Folks who buy pieces that don't see marked increases in value rarely put those pieces back on market, meaning their meager returns aren't incorporated into published averages. From the report:The annual return to the standard [repeat sales regression] art index over the period 1972 to 2010 is on average 10 percent, with volatility of 17 percent, a Sharpe Ratio of 0.24, and a correlation with world equity returns of 0.3. Given these statistics, a mean-variance investor would allocate roughly equal fractions of her portfolio to art and to public equities, and she would appear to earn a portfolio Sharpe Ratio of 0.31, which is 17% higher than the Sharpe Ratio of 0.26 on a portfolio of equities only.However, these returns are not what a passive art investor actually earns, unless she is able to pick a portfolio of “winners” that rise in value in similar fashion to the paintings that come to auction (such that the RSR index is representative for her portfolio). Instead, it is the selection-corrected returns that are more representative for the experience of an investor who has invested in a well-diversified, passive portfolio of paintings. After correcting for selection bias we find an average annual art index return of 6.5 percent, which is 3.5 percentage points lower than the non-corrected index, and a Sharpe Ratio of 0.04, down from 0.24 without the selection correction.The takeaway? “A passive investor who corrects for sample selection optimally assigns zero weight to paintings across all selection model specifications, as the diversification benefit from investing in art as an asset class does not outweigh its low Sharpe Ratio,” according to the report.And that’s before accounting for all the other risks of art: “[…]transaction and insurance costs, […] the risks of forgeries, thefts, and physical damage.”Korteweg came upon the problem after researching similar biases in real estate markets and venture capital. He’s no philistine. He understands that art pays aesthetic dividends that other investments don’t (because who wants to hear about your bond portfolio?), “but you better enjoy what you buy,” he says.There are, of course, exceptions. Connections in the art world can be paramount. But due diligence can close the gap -- which explains the proliferation of art investment funds. Still, many of those, more often than not, rob you of the opportunity to feature your investment on your living room wall.If you won’t heed his advice, Korteweg and his research partners unveiled a couple of helpful tidbits for art investing. One: as indices already show, returns for post-war and contemporary artists far outstrip other collecting categories, and have for over a decade. Two: market activity surrounding individual artists skyrockets in the two years following their death.” note: the above is all directly quoted from Forbes Magazine.As an additional note: Deloitte-Touche puts out a huge Art Investment booklet every year. In their 2016 book, if one troubles to read it, you will find that :”72 % of investors say they bought art for passion with an investment view. Only 10% of wealth managers – the lowest level reported since the launch of the Art & Finance Report in 2011 – believe the art and investment fund industry will expand in the next two to three years (down from 20% in 2014). This shows that wealth managers remain very cautious about the art investment fund initiatives in today’s market.” The italics are mine.Art is properly purchased for love. However, if you are spending any kind of money on it, you don’t wish to be stupid about your purchase. Therefore, consider these items before you buy in addition to your sincere affection.Is the artist mature (over 40) or just beginning? In other words, are you in for some upheavals in style and career?Is the artist collected by any museums or major collectors/collections?Does the artist have a good representing gallery (or two or three)?Does their artwork offer something interesting and innovative in the art world - but not too far out?Does their artwork demonstrate technical accomplishment? (less important these days, but over the long haul, still has value).On balance, however, the greatest collections are always based on some kind of passion fused with knowledge. So find something you love and learn about it. Then pay attention to the other cautions secondarily. And that makes it more fun, too.Thanks Lawrence, for the compliment of the A2A.

Unlike most answers, I do think we have some “good gun laws”. The problem is twofold; those laws don’t (can’t) go far enough in scope, and they’re not enforced until after much more heinous crimes have occurred as a result. And not even then; the Parkland shooter violated the Gun Free School Zones Act, but he’s not being charged with that offense, because the 17 counts of premeditated murder he racked up in the next few minutes afterward are being treated quite rightly with much higher priority by prosecutors. You’re typically only charged with these kinds of malum prohibitum crimes when the investigators and prosecutors can’t find anything else to charge you with, which literally makes the law a way to turn people with no intention of committing a violent crime into felons anyway.On the other hand, the great majority of the laws we have, Federal and State, are either so anachronistic they no longer make sense, or are feel-good measures that never made any sense to begin with. Case in point, the aforementioned GFSZA; who in their right mind ever thought that a sign would have deterred the Stockton shooter? Or the Columbine shooters? Sandy Hook? Parkland? Santa Fe? They all walked right past one of these:And nothing happened until they started shooting.So, this list is gonna piss everybody off at some point or another, in that it will, in one single argument, call for more and less gun laws than our current status quo. You have been warned:Universalize and streamline background checks using updated technology. When NICS was conceptualized in the early 90s, the Internet as a public resource was still very young, and most people and businesses didn’t have access to it. 20-ish years later in 2015, 77% of Americans live in a home with broadband, 75% have a smartphone or other Internet enabled mobile device, and Internet access is a practical must-have for any retail businesses to run credit/debit cards, so even if you happen to not have Internet access, your local gun store will.As such, there’s really very little reason for NICS to still be a call center, at least not one of its current size. We can do the same job with a secure web application handling the overwhelming majority of the traffic. That would additionally allow that app to be accessible to people besides FFLs, and would be the most convenient option available for universalizing background checks.That also creates other possibilities, such as streamlining the 4473. This is actually a virtual necessity if you’re going to universalize background checks without requiring an FFL to run the check; the information on a 4473 is identity theft on a silver platter, and you’re going to be expecting the average Joe to not only not misuse that data, but to safeguard it for however long you want the provenance chain to be traceable. The REAL ID Act gives us some possibilities for uniquely verifying identity without traditional identifying information; name, address and “document discriminator” aka audit number off of an RIA-compliant ID would be enough to get any other information needed as of time of sale, and when actually running the background check, all you’d actually need to input is the DD code and state of issue and the app could retrieve anything else needed.The questionnaire is little more than a trap, and we can get rid of it; the idea is that if you are a prohibited person and filled the questionnaire out such that the FFL actually bothered to call it in, and NICS denied you, you have just made a materially false statement on a Federal government form. However, the Brady Act itself makes trying to buy a firearm while knowingly prohibited a crime in itself, so either way the Feds have to prove the offence was committed knowledgeably. All we really need to give background checks “teeth” is a very obvious “click-wrap” disclosure in the app that states unambiguously that if you fall into one of the listed prohibited categories and submit the form, you are committing a crime. We can capture a signature image if you really want, but no handwriting analyst will ever swear on oath that your signature drawn on a tablet with a stylus would match a signature sample written on paper.Once the check comes back clean, you have to give the seller the ability to prove beyond any doubt that he ran the check. Since centralization of records of gun sales is an extremely touchy issue, not to mention illegal under the 1986 FOPA, the proof has to be self-contained in the paper record of sale. You can do that by encoding a “digital signature” on the paper document, such as in a QR code (it’d be a large one, but the spec allows for up to 4K of data to be encoded in one QR which would be enough). NICS basically receives all the information on the form, makes sure the background check on the listed individual passed, then strings it together in a known order, hashes it with a secure hash function, then encrypts that hash using an “asymmetric key” algorithm like RSA or ECC. You don’t have to know the technical details, just that this “hash and encrypt” signature system is the backbone of secure communications on the Internet that most major websites now use for all their traffic, and it’s worked for a couple decades now, failing only when the human side of information security does.So, to prove you ran the background check, you produce a copy of the record of sale, the QR code can be scanned into a mobile version of the NICS app along with the plain text data of the form, and the plain text data is hashed the same way as the signature originally was. Then, the app decrypts the signature with the public key of the keypair that initially encrypted it, and if the hashes match, whoever’s asking knows the record is authentic, and the guy on the form is the next guy they need to talk to about why that gun ended up at a crime scene. They know it’s authentic because only the information on that form, encrypted using a key known only within the NICS system as of the date of sale (they have a lifespan; NICS could generate a new keypair every couple years, and the app would know all public keys and the date range each one was valid for), could have produced the digital signature in the QR code, which means NICS vetted the exact data on the printed form. If you don’t have a record of sale or other proof of dispossession (i.e. police record of theft, loss or destruction) and your gun shows up at a crime scene, you’re now a POI and guilty of a crime in itself (failure to maintain required records).A system like this would allow UBCs to be performed by anyone with a laptop or smartphone, and it would even allow buyers to avoid the three-day delay on an in-person private meetup by vetting themselves and obtaining a “pre-authorization”. And it would do so without requiring an FFL (though you could still use one and they’d become the custodian of the record of sale), and without centralizing these records in government hands (a de facto registry of gun owners).Increase the Federal minimum age to purchase semi-automatic long guns to 21, alongside the minimum for handguns. Psychologists are pretty clear that puberty, and the host of chemical, physical and mental changes that occur during it, really doesn’t wind down until the mid-20s for the average man; maybe a year or two earlier for women. Auto insurance companies know this; you can be totally accident free your entire driving career since the age of 16, and they don’t consider you “low-risk” until you’re 25. On that note, we as society grant the rights and privileges (and responsibilities) associated with adulthood to young adults gradually; most religions have an informal age of majority (such as the Age of Reason in Christianity, around 12 or 13), then from a more legal standpoint you can drive at 16, you’re criminally and civilly liable for your actions at 17 (though this varies by state), you can vote and own most guns at 18, and drink at 21. So, the “eighteen means eighteen” argument that when you’re legally an adult, you’re a full adult, just doesn’t fly. Any SDI in boot camp will tell you their 18-year-olds are just as immature as any other, the main difference is that along with their service rifle (and long before they touch one), they get a no-nonsense introduction to following orders as given without argument or discussion, designed to condition them to do exactly that when lives are on the line.So no, I do not think that an 18 year old, simply by virtue of managing to not piss off their parents or teachers long enough to attain said age, should be able to walk up to the firearms counter of a sporting goods store and buy absolutely anything under the glass or on the back wall. There’s legal adulthood and there’s physical adulthood, and the medical consensus is that those are currently separated by about 8 years. At least give them the three extra that we already do for alcohol and handguns, for them to realize that life actually does get better in many ways after high school, before we allow them to purchase a rifle that can end a life for each wiggle of their pointer finger with no other action required. At 18, you can buy and own break-action and repeating-action long guns; for semi-automatics and revolvers, it should be 21.Temporary firearm restraining orders. Oh yeah, we’re going here too. “Red Flag laws” have been the subject of serious debate in the U.S., with arguments against ranging from “the police can already do this if there’s a credible threat to someone’s safety” to “this is just an end run around the rights of the accused allowing vindictive individuals to use the government to indefinitely suspend a person’s RKBA without the burden of proof required for a criminal conviction“.Personally, I think it’s a good idea that needs very careful attention paid to its implementation. Whether or not society needs an actual law detailing a new process, we shouldn’t have to wait for a potential, specific threat to public safety to become an actual specific threat to public safety before action can be taken. At the same time, I recognize the very serious potential for evil, and it simply cannot be dismissed. Protective orders don’t require a unanimous jury verdict based on there being no reasonable doubt that one is needed. All the petitioner needs is to convince a judge it’s a good idea, and judges run the gamut on the topic, with most of the ones in New Jersey chomping at the bit to sign anything that comes across their desk that takes a gun away from a civilian.So, if we’re gonna use court orders to remove guns from a person who has not been convicted of any crime, we need to strike a very fine and specific balance between the law being too easily abused for government or personal gain, and the law being just as ineffective as waiting for a crime to be committed. There must be controls in place regarding who can “wave the red flag”, what criteria is valued in determining to grant the initial order, and a guaranteed maximum time for hearing the subject’s challenge to said order. In addition, a common criticism of the laws is that is that the restraining orders target the guns based on a need for mental health care, but don’t provide mental health care. If we’re really worried about someone’s mental state, that sounds like the obvious place to start. We can talk about these orders as an exception to being “involuntarily committed to a mental health institution”; if the care was the result of a temporary restraining order it doesn’t trigger the permanent Federal prohibition, provided the care has some measure of success (or doesn’t find a problem).I’ve also floated the idea of a “yellow flag”, an indication that someone is in need of a refresher on firearms safety due to demonstrated complacency or ignorance of basic safety rules, but is unwilling to get the training themselves. A court order to force the training based on a description of the unsafe behavior, in lieu of any possible criminal charges for said behavior, might have a significant effect on reducing negligent discharges and unintended access by children while protecting gun owners from rabid prosecution for first-time offenses. Similar safeguards would be needed to avoid this being used as a nuisance or a backdoor to indefinite loss of gun rights with no criminal conviction.Now, having agreed in a very big way to a few major recent demands of the myriad gun control groups, I must in all seriousness ask, what do gun owners get in return for being limited to single-shots and repeating-actions for three years, having to defend against repeated aspersions on our mental health from a vindictive ex-spouse or your in-laws, plus being required to Federally vet anyone they pass a gun to, and then maintain proof of that check for years or even indefinitely?While I think the conclusion of the “cake analogy” - “I want my whole damn cake back now” - is unhelpful and even counterproductive, the position is sound; gun owners have been agreeing to allow their right to keep and bear arms to be restricted in the name of public safety for over 80 years, and all that’s happened is that those who are against gun ownership in the first place come back wanting more restrictions.This is in fact the stated goal of gun control activists like Josh Sugarmann; to restrict, piece by piece, the RKBA in the U.S., like boiling a frog, until the 2A is effectively dead because those still willing to jump through the regulatory hoops are a superminority, and/or because the only weapons still available for civilian purchase have little practical use for self-defense (which is what 60% of gun owners give as a major reason they are gun owners, compared to just 36% for hunting). They get impatient from time to time and make big pushes, but after most of the major players favoring gun control “outed” themselves as to their end goal in the early 90s, resulting in the Republican Party’s first bicameral Congressional majority in 40 years, most have walked back their public positions. Can those new stated end goals for gun control be trusted? Only the GCAs really know for sure, but history is not on their side.So, if we’re going to call UBCs and an increased minimum age a “compromise”, it should fit the definition; both sides should leave the table angry with the agreement they reached. To that end, gun control advocates do not get it all their own way; policies proven to be counterproductive or ineffective since their passage need to be rolled back, along with additional measures that become possible once it’s that much more obvious that the guys who legally own guns are not the problem in our country:Repeal the Federal Gun-Free School Zones Act, and all government-level policies restricting the possession of guns on any publicly-owned or managed land or building where entry is not contingent on passing through an armed security checkpoint where all entrants are searched for weapons. If the government and/or property owner is serious about people not having guns in a particular place, you know it before you get five feet inside. We have the technology and the process. The question is whether it’s worthwhile to implement these in any given place. If it’s not, hanging up a sign forcing those breaking no other law to disarm not only doesn’t solve the problem, it makes it worse.I will, in this discussion, give private property owners the benefit of the doubt; its your property, you’re a legal entity just like I am, it’s your prerogative to restrict entry as you wish based on any fact not explicitly protected under Federal law. I personally like to at least know someone else in my home besides me has a gun, and I won’t begrudge you the same. But had you caught me on any other day I’d be insisting on landowner liability for owners/controllers of “places of public accomodation” posted as “no guns allowed” for victims of violent crime in such venues. You are imposing a restriction on my entry into your otherwise publicly-accessible place, which places me and everyone else there at any give time at greater risk of harm, and you take no additional steps to mitigate that risk; that makes your policy a contributing factor to any criminal violence I might become a victim of while on your property.Repeal the Hughes Amendment, and allow purchase and registration of new automatic firearms in the United States. Yeah, you heard me right. The NFA, in itself, was sufficient to virtually end the violence committed with legally-owned automatic weapons; it gave the precursor organizations to the BATFE and FBI the legal tools they needed to dismantle the Mafia gangs of the 1920s, and since it passed, not one violent crime was committed with a legally-owned, NFA-registered machine gun. The only two crimes committed with any legally-owned machine gun involved police-issue machine pistols, and the crimes that actually prompted the Hughes Amendment, mainly in the Miami area among rival drug gangs, were committed with illegal weapons smuggled into the country alongside the drugs. The most notable shootout involving automatic weapons since the passage of the NFA, the North Hollywood Shootout, happened 10 years after the passage of the Hughes Amendment, and involved illegally-modified AKMs that would have landed the robbers in prison for 20 years each even without the Hughes Amendment in effect.Once again, the law is only a restriction on those inclined to follow it in the first place. The Hughes Amendment was passed in response to a spate of crimes in Miami, representing less than 3% of the total homicide count in Miami-Dade County, committed with weapons the ATF didn’t even know about in the first place. The ability of people to legally buy machine guns didn’t figure into it in the slightest. The Hughes Amendment also gave us the current political climate regarding guns and any registration thereof; in 1986, the Feds proved that they were willing to use registration as a first step to an outright ban. It had been done at lower levels before (DC’s handgun ban dated to 1976 and was legislated a similar way; you had to register all firearms to possess them in DC, and beginning in 1976 you couldn’t register handguns unless they were already there), but the Hughes Amendment brought the tactic to national attention, poisoning any attempt at actual compromise ever since. If gun control advocates want gun rights advocates to ever sit down at a negotiating table and assume good faith ever again, this strategy needs to be demonstrably off the table as a gun control tactic.Deregulate suppressors and short-barreled firearms. The NFA was passed 80 years ago, and was originally intended to restrict access to “concealable” firearms by union labor protesters, while not being an insurmountable hurdle to the labor bosses putting down the strikes, nor the police who are specifically exempted by the law and for whom the factory or mine was the primary taxpayer in the locale. In the works for most of the Roaring 20s, the NFA finally passed early in FDR’s term, due to a combination of the increasing publicity of mafia violence in the media involving fully-automatic weapons, and an attempted assassination of then-President-elect Roosevelt making gun control an early personal priority of FDR’s.That was 84 years ago. In more recent times, we wear less clothing in general, making these same types of weapons harder to conceal, meanwhile even illegal use of weapons and devices subject to NFA restrictions (registered or otherwise) is very low. Hunters and homeowners want to use suppressors to save their hearing and reduce the disturbance inherent in a rifle shot to those nearby, and for proof they’re not dangerous in themselves, one only has to look at the UK, where they’re sold off the shelf in any sporting goods store, and hunters are encouraged by police to use one. Homeowners also want access to short-barreled rifles as home defense weapons, easier to aim than a handgun while easier to maneuver through a home than a 16″ barreled rifle. For both SBRs and SBSes, workarounds to the law have been found and vetted by the ATF, and have become very popular, making the additional NFA restriction of short-barreled weapons useless in practice.National carry permit reciprocity, and a Federal pre-emption of “may-issue” permitting policies among State governments. Totally within the Feds’ purview under provisions of the Full Faith and Credit Clause (giving Congress the power to legislate the manner in which legal instruments of one state are to be recognized and honored by any other), Federally-enforced national reciprocity would force all 50 states, D.C. and all Federal territories to recognize a valid concealed-carry permit issued by any state - or the government-issued resident ID card of any state that does not require a permit - as if it were a valid concealed carry permit in their jurisdiction, subject to the laws of the state in which the person is currently located. So if it’s illegal to enter a bar in Texas with a concealed weapon (and it is, a felony in fact), it’s just as illegal to do so with a Tennessee permit as a Texas one. But, if it’s legal to walk around Central Park while strapped if you have an NYC carry permit, it’s just as legal to do it with a Texas permit, or a Tennessee permit, or a driver’s license from the State of Vermont.Now, national reciprocity, especially when it includes nonresident licenses, will accomplish an effective end to “may-issue” policies anyway, but I wanted to be explicit about this. The majority of the states in this country recognize a right to carry, typically subject to state regulation on the manner of the wearing of arms. As of 2018, the remaining few states that exercise subjective discretion in permitting, typically along the lines of requiring “good cause”, do so for the sole and express reason of limiting permits to a privileged few. It’s codified in Maryland’s version of the good cause requirement; applicants must have a reason to carry that “distinguishes the applicant from the general gun-owning public”; a desire to defend oneself is not distinguishing, as 60% of gun owners have their guns for that reason.This is unconstitutional, and to date the only credible reason SCOTUS has not heard a case on this topic is that the Court, and Roberts as Chief Justice, is unwilling to be seen as a tool to overturn state gun laws in a series of lock-step ideologically-polarized 5–4 decisions. They want the existing decisions in Heller and McDonald to be digested and mixed into lower court case law, and once that settles to a backwash of a few notable disagreements among Circuit Courts and State Supreme Courts, they’ll entertain the question. It’s well-known in legal circles that Gorsuch and Thomas are already chomping at the bit for another 2A case, but as of when Peruta was denied cert in 2016, the popular theory was that Alito and Roberts were unsure of Kennedy’s vote (on top of the whole “tool to overturn state laws 5–4” thing), and so took the out that with Moore v. Madigan not having been appealed by Illinois, there was no active Circuit Court split pending SCOTUS review.That’s compromise. I give you, you give me. Gun owners began the 20th Century with zero Federal restrictions on gun purchase or ownership, and many fewer State restrictions than most of the more problematic states for gun owners currently impose. The original position of this debate is that Americans have free and easy access to whatever firearms were available, and therefore “keeping some of my gun rights for now” is not a “compromise position”. That’s like me telling you “give me all the money you have now and all your future earnings”, you refusing, and then me saying “let’s compromise; you give me half of your money and 75% of your future earnings”.Would you agree to that “deal”? Yeah, didn’t think so.