My Recent Comments

• Valleynative, The Constitution doesn't say anything about ice-cream but I still expect to see it in my grocery aisle. Read Hobbes or Locke or just about any political theorist on the obligations of the state. It requires no enumeration. How a state provides those police powers can vary and in our Constitution it is left to the states unless for national defense or federal crimes. This anarcho-liberterian constitutional nonsense really is disturbing. Perhaps the fact that a bullet travels faster than a cop car is one reason for your pessimism. Perhaps if we didn't have so many bullet delivery vehicles widely available to any moron with two nickels to rub together you'd feel safer. Regardless, still don't see you arguing with my central point. Which makes sense now, since you seem to think we live or ought to live with our fingers on the trigger in a war of all against all; a kind of domestic mutual assured destruction.
  1 month ago
• Valleynative, You and I agree that this legislation did very little to address the problem. With 250+ million guns floating around the country universal background checks are only a small part of the solution. I notice you did not disagree with my central point. I never fail to wonder the blanket uses of the 'dependence' argument. But you really brought it to a new level of absurdity when you indicate people should not depend on government to to keep them safe!! That's the first duty of government. Where did you attend Civics class? Anarchist U?
  1 month ago
• As a gun-owner who sometimes ends up on shooting and firearms forums and reading the statements of some gunowners and their support for the NRA and other radical gun-rights groups the only conclusion I can come to is that their ostensible goal is to protect domestic insurrectionists; gun-owners whose primary purpose for owning guns is to turn them against a theoretically tyrannical United States government. There is no other explanation for the obsessive resistance to the regulation of firearms or the use of taggants in explosives. It appears to be grounded in a logic that recognizes that if law-enforcement can background-check criminals, madmen and terrorists and track explosives then they can track "patriotic" revolutionaries. In other words, in 21st Century America, it is not our democratic traditions, institutions or the Constitution but the threat of violence that ensures our democracy. They give the right to bear arms priority over all other rights in the belief that it is the threat of violent insurrection that guarantees democracy. And if they fail to maintain unfettered and unregulated access to any firearm they desire it is because of a tyrannical American government . The rationale of US Congressmen that support the NRA is as transparent as the support the NRA gets from a multi-billion dollar firearms industry. As my Dad used to say, “When someone tells you it's not about the money, it's about the money.”. And the money that the NRA is able to direct at supporting or defeating political candidates, depending on their willingness to be co-opted by that organization, indicates that some in Congress are more worried about thier electoral seats than the welfare of the republic. The body count of Americans dead by gun violence is just collateral damage. We expect such narrow representation from House members. But Senators are elected to take a broader and more sober view of national interests. Sen. Flake failed a simple gut-check.
  1 month ago
• mytoosense, If that is what upsets you most then you have problem. Because does it really matter? Are the people killed with these weapons any less dead? Is there any good reason for civilians to own or carry firearms with fire rates of 70 rounds per minute per minute much less 700? The answer to all these questions is a flat No.
  4 months ago
• ValleyNative, No one is suggesting we ban ALL guns. There is no legislation that suggests we ban all guns so that's not even a choice. This is about regulation not prohibition. You also suggests that if the 2nd Amendment is ever struck down through legal and democratic Constitutional processes that gun-owners will not comply. That makes them criminals and in violation of the Constitution they seem to revere so much. It's either citizen or gun-owner at that point. If it's more important to own a gun than perform one's duty as a citizen then the loss of a job and reputation seems fitting. I understand the "guns don't kill people..." argument for what it is. It is a fallacious attempt to avoid ever addressing the problem of gun violence. When you have 300 million guns in a society the statistical probability that any maniac with a grudge and a couple dollars in their pocket will acquire a gun is 99.9%. We're buying more and bigger guns to protect ourselves from people who have more and bigger guns. That's the definition of mutually assured destruction(MAD). Insanity. And the more guns we have the less safe we ALL are.
  4 months ago
• Velleynative, The result of passing any law to prohibit something will necessarily define those who break it as members of a criminal class. That makes the "outlaws" argument invalid and meaningless. It is like saying "if we outlaw (anything) only outlaws will have/do (anything)" - it's a nonsense statement. We don't stop making laws because some people will break them.
  4 months ago
• Guns don't kill people, people kill people A chicken-argument that takes us down a logical rabbit-hole that we never emerge from and has the virtue of delaying any discussion of gun violence. When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns It's called a tautology just like "if heroin is outlawed only outlaws will have heroin" and is essentially meaningless. The whole point of passing laws to prohibit something is to prohibit it. Who give up a little liberty to gain a little security deserve neither... which like a ton of quotes from the Right are so often wrong. The actual quote is Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety Note the qualifier "essential". Government exists because we give up a little freedom for security - read Hobbes. The ownership of numerous high-powered firearms with rapid cyclic fire rates is not an "essential" liberty" but a dangerous indulgence. Finally, the most idiotic of all. That the possession of small-arms by the American populace guarantees our freedoms. No, they don't. The Constitution does that and the customs of a democratic society. And I'd suggest that a government that possesses the level of military technology we do makes such an argument not only laughable but suicidal. To suggest taking up arms against a duly elected US government because it doesn't interpret some right as "absolute" is a nod to anarchy and facism.
  4 months ago
• Mr Jefferson, Aside from the fact that Thomas Jefferson was considered pretty left-wing in his day(with the exception of the whole slave owner thing)... Remind us just where in history gun regulation led to confiscation? And let's not confuse correlation with causality. Don't try Hitler or Stalin because it just ain't so.
  4 months ago
• My last should have read MSNBC not CNBC
  5 months ago
• My last should have read MSNBC not CNBC
  5 months ago