Crypto News: Which is easier to buy in Maine: a gun or a chicken?

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In Maine, it's easy to carry.
Housing prices are still scary.
Fentanyl is made by an adversary.
Volatility looks rather ordinary.

Let's say you're interested in raising chickens in your backyard. Can you just drive up to a random farm and ask if you can buy some birds? Of course not. Towns and cities have rules for raising chickens. If you lived in Lewiston, Maine, for instance, you would need to meet the following requirements:

Only female chickens are allowed

The maximum number of chickens allowed is six

Chickens must be purchased from an approved source

Chickens shall be kept as pets and for personal use only

Owners cannot sell eggs or engage in chicken breeding

The slaughtering of chickens is prohibited

Chickens must be kept in a fenced area or enclosure at all times

Chicken houses can't be closer than 20 feet to any property line

Chicken orders shall not be perceptible at the property boundaries

Chicken noises shall not be loud enough to disturb neighbors

Owners must reduce the attraction of predators and rodents

Chickens infested with insects/parasites may be removed by the City

It's a lot of rules for an animal that has a walnut-sized brain. And that's just my abridged version of Lewiston's ordinance requirements for domesticated chickens. It really makes one wonder why, exactly, society has so many rules for chicken owners and not for gun owners. The Pine Tree State does not require background checks or permits to purchase a handgun. Its lack of basic firearm rules makes the state #25 in the country for gun law strength, according to Everytown for Gun Safety (which was founded by Mike Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP).

As I'm sure you've heard by now, a man allegedly went on a killing spree with an AR-15-style rifle last night at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston. At least 18 people are dead and 13 others injured. Since the suspect remains at large, residents of surrounding towns have been under lockdown and many schools and businesses were closed today.

"What can we say that we haven't said before?" That was the question we mulled over at our editors' meeting this morning. As of this year, nearly 1 in 5 US adults say they have had a family member killed by a gun, including homicides and suicides, according to KFF. One in six (17%) say they personally witnessed someone being shot. And 75% of adults in gun-owning households have a firearm in their home that is either unlocked, loaded or kept with ammunition.

The reality is that gun violence is a policy choice, and until our policies around owning these weapons change, mass shootings will continue to happen again and again and again.

Is there a constitutional right to a military-style semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15? Noah Feldman says the Second Amendment applies to all weapons that ordinary people carry on an ordinary basis for self-defense. AR-15s "are weapons of war — for, in fact, a well-regulated militia — not for ordinary people to carry for ordinary use," he writes.

The gun-death epidemic in the US can be broken down into the following categories: mass shootings, homicides, suicides and unintentional gun deaths. "Mass shootings and unintentional deaths make up the smallest percentage. In an average year, 50% to 60% of gun deaths are suicides; around 40% are homicides," Dr. Megan Ranney, deputy dean at the Brown University School of Public Health, told Sarah Green Carmichael last year. Maine, comparatively, has an extremely high rate of suicides:

Maine does not have a red flag law, which would allow law enforcement to try and temporarily prevent someone in crisis from accessing guns. "Research shows that a majority of mass shooters exhibit warning signs before committing murder," Bloomberg's editorial board writes. The purported gunman in Lewiston is no different: 40-year-old Robert Card reportedly has a history of mental health issues, spending two weeks at a mental health facility this summer after allegedly threatening to "shoot up" a military base.

If we have rules and regulations in place that prevent the slaughtering of domesticated chickens, you'd think we'd be able to create some rules that could stop a gunman from slaughtering a bunch of people who chose to go bowling on a Wednesday night. It's really not that big of an ask.

The other day I read this fascinating story by Mark Dent on the economics of haunted houses. I find it funny that most modern haunted houses aren't actually in a house at all. Instead, a lot of them are constructed within a shuttered building of a suburban strip mall, similar the model Spirit Halloween uses every September and October. But when setting up a haunted house, business owners need to consider building codes and budget constraints in order to generate a year's worth of revenue in less than two months. It's not the best model, to say the least.

But if you think it's hard trying to find a haunted house, just try finding a non-haunted one. Justin Fox says the standard metrics for homeownership obscure just how unlikely it has become for millennials to own a home in the US these days. Of all the 25-to-34-year-olds in the US, only 32.6% own homes, he writes. That's down 20 percentage points from the late 1970s and almost 10 points since the mid-2000s:

Similar to the haunted house situation, young folks are pushing off buying and choosing to rent instead. But even then, Bloomberg's editorial board says, the cost of renting has become too high. In New York City, most tenants are blowing the majority of their paycheck on rent:

"Lifting restrictions on converting office buildings into residences makes sense in the country's biggest office market. So does adding more small apartments that share common kitchens and other facilities," the editors write. Mayor Eric Adams seems to understand this, but tiny policy tweaks won't be enough to house the entire city (and the rats). "He shouldn't stop fighting for what's really needed. The rest of the country will be watching," they conclude. Read the whole thing, and try not to get too spooked out.

Have you ever played Connections by the New York Times? The premise is simple: You have to group words together that share a common theme. So let's play a mini game right now: Apache. China Girl. Dance Fever. Friend. Goodfellas. Jackpot. Murder 8. What's the connection? If you were to have asked me this yesterday, I'd have guessed they're all hyperpop groups or brands of tinned fish. But no. Andreas Kluth says they're colorful street names for fentanyl (free read). Chinese drug traffickers produce the synthetic opioid and ship it directly to the US with fake labels, and the stuff is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. "The fentanyl crisis helps Beijing because it weakens the US. The epidemic started roughly a decade ago, and from the start the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, the second-largest in the world after America's, played the leading role," he writes.

"Despite the continuing war in the Middle East, most markets have been relatively calm. Stock exchanges have not plunged, while volatility appears manageable, indeed ordinary. If you were looking at just the markets (except for Israel's), you might not even know there is a war on," Tyler Cowen writes. What does that mean, exactly? Although stock market prices can't always predict geopolitical crises, Tyler says they're one of the best tools we have. Perhaps our investments are trying to send a message about what the future holds.

China's deep-sea mining business leaves America on the sidelines. — James Stavridis

Morgan Stanley gets a new CEO but misses an opportunity for a clean break. — Chris Hughes

GE's shrinking phase is almost done. Next up will be acquisitions. — Brooke Sutherland

The latest casualty of fintech frothiness won't be the last. — Lionel Laurent

UAW strikers are celebrating today, but Ford won, too. — Liam Denning

Mike Johnson is gonna need a lot of on-the-job training. — Jonathan Bernstein

Unilever's new leader isn't bringing enough pizazz to the boardroom. — Andrea Felsted

Uh-oh: Stock-bond correlations are positive again. — Jonathan Levin

SBF was worried about employee chats.

Israel says a key planner behind Oct. 7 is dead.

USA Today ran some sketchy articles.

This is the soccer world's LeBron James.

Living with squalor syndrome is not pleasant.

Gen Z found out about Snoopy.

A guide to the non-Taylor NFL girlfriends.

Baked bean innovations are on the rise.

Notes: Please spill the beans and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net.

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