Firestarter

What, you mean you really do have a thing for Ayn Rand?

Even so, you said that I had a position in the administration, which was once quite true (I moved on from that job some months ago). To equate that with being employed by the President, however, is ridiculously ignorant. The President doesn't employ the Secretary of Defense, the White House Press Secretary, or the Attorney-General either, or anyone else in his administration; he's their boss. There's a difference. You were correct, or at least once correct, and snuffbox got it wrong. End of story.

Im sure it was...I dont think anyone here used it seriously. My point about was that I actually know people who use it in seriousness when this issue comes up. It's a serious argument and a valid counterpoint. Far more people die as a result of car accidents in the United States than from any kind of gun-related violence, and there are fewer cars than guns in the United States. That means that cars are indisputably more dangerous than guns. It doesn't matter that they're designed for travelling and guns are designed for killing; guns would kill a whole lot more people if they were cars. Has anyone called for a ban on cars? Why not? Knives are legal. Knives were originally designed to kill - we don't have any problems with knives being in houses which also contain children. That's because knives are tools. When a tool is used for a reprehensible purpose, we don't ban the tool and we don't try to punish the tool. We punish the criminal. Well, guns are also tools. They are designed to kill, just as knives were designed to kill. And there are valid reasons to kill a person - in self-defense, for example, or in defense of others. That's why police officers carry them. Why not bombs, you ask? This is a classic case of sloppy thinking - not that I expect much better from you. Bombs are designed to wage war, destroy buildings, and/or kill a large number of people in proximity. There is no valid reason for any one individual private citizen to require such a device. Congress takes the decision to wage war, destroying property is a criminal offense, and killing large numbers of people in proximity isn't something that normal people do in self-defense, unless their name happens to be Schwarzenegger and they're in a movie. So much for that. Next.

Apology accepted. It's just that this has come up before.

Shaddap.

Honestly, that group of "astronomers, astronauts, and scientists" is at least as politically manipulative and greedy as any given politician in any party. You think a constant stream of manned shuttles circling round and round places we've been any number of times already is about science? Every independent expert agrees that it's completely worthless and ridiculously unsafe. The International Space Station? Same thing. NASA always has and still does make supposedly "scientific" decisions based on their photo-op value. Humans in space = risk = ratings = bigger budget. It's kind of like the lunar equivalent of a campaign rally. At least the President wants us to go somewhere new.

I agree, and almost everyone I know in law enforcement also agrees. You think we want to spend our time hunting down teenage potheads, clogging up the courts with morons who really aren't doing any harm to anyone but themselves, and not even much of that? I don't. I couldn't care less about illegal drugs. I don't like the sellers, but I honestly couldn't give a flying fuck about the buyers. A lot of people on "the right" feel the same way. But the so-called "war on drugs" has support across the political spectrum, so it's probably not going to change real soon. The only difference is that the liberals prefer to lock up the potheads in mandatory "treatment centers" rather than jails. I think both approaches are stupid. As for your tedious bullshit about "gun zealots," I've heard it before and quite frankly I'm not impressed. The Second Amendment says nothing about a limit to the number of guns you can own based on what some random self-proclaimed internet "libertarian" considers "unnecarry." [sic] It says that the people of the United States have an absolute right to bear arms. I can have a fucking armoury in my basement if I want, and if the Constitution says it's all right, I'm not sure exactly who the hell gave you the authority to contradict it. Oh, and one other thing: I'm not a "George Bush employee." Your would-be witticism isn't amusing or accurate, although it isn't insulting (as I'm sure you intended it to be) either. I'm a Republican, a serving officer in Air Force intelligence, a lifetime NRA member, and yes, a strong supporter of the President, who is, yes, my Commander-in-Chief, but my employers are the citizens of the United States. They're the ones who pay my salary, and they're the ones whom, at the pleasure of the President, I serve. See if you can get that through your skull. If you have trouble, let me know, and I'll try to find a jackhammer.

And it's a total of 12, anyway.

Yes. No.

Four year-olds aren't cat burglars. If an adult can't keep dangerous objects out of the reach of a four year-old, that adult is clinically brain-dead. Any child capable of getting something that a responsible, intelligent adult has locked away is old enough to know right from wrong. Yeah, if you define an eight year-old who understands that killing people = bad as a "superchild." I define her as normal, but maybe you're drawing from your own experiences and didn't catch on to such subtle moral nuances until a more advanced age. What are you now? Nine? You really think that comparing the numbers of anecdotes recited to support each side in a debate makes ANY difference to the facts and the statistics involved? Any difference at all? Wow, I didn't know you were this stupid. Please show me the figures you used to reach these probabilities. The time you've spent also far outweighs your knowledge of basic statistics, respect for the Constitution, and common sense, evidently. But I knew that already.

You haven't begun to argue. You've patronised people left and right, you've whined and cried like the limp-wristed sissy-boy you are, and you've drawn idiotic conclusions from anecdotal evidence. Prove that it's the guns rather than the parents that are at fault in any one of your stories. Prove it, or shut your yap.

My eight year-old niece stays with us about three nights a week on average. She's got her own air pistol and we take her to the firing range at the NRA building once a week to practice with a real weapon. Her current ambition is to earn her NRA Junior Marksman badge before Christmas. Next pathetic attempt at condescension, please.

I own seven privately registered handguns, two government-issued sidearms, and two privately registered rifles. My wife owns a small revolver. All our weapons are kept in our house, and amazingly enough, no one's dead yet. Sorry to interrupt your weepy ultraliberal circlejerk of worthless anecdotes. Wait, you say, that doesn't prove anything? That's just one household? Yeah. Exactly. And the same applies to your ridiculous hypermelodramatic stories. Over a hundred million households across the country have guns, and the number of accidents is vanishingly small in comparison - utterly meaningless statistically. The children of careless parents die in car crashes too. Let's ban cars next! How about charcoal grills? How about matches? They can set houses on fire and it's far easier for children to strike a match than it is for them to fire a gun. Let's ban matches. And lighters. After all, you little crybabies want to ban cigarettes too, so who needs lighters or matches? You want my guns? Molon labe, fuckers. Molon labe.

Huh. Do I slap my wife around, or does she slap me around? Should I just hit myself a few times? Man, being a homosexual Republican girl gets confusing...

... People actually listen to this ridiculous crap? Check that. Hell, I just realised it's probably in my wife's CD player right now.

Here's a column that might help you out, Rob. Kerry's Special Friends by David Brooks, in the New York Times.

I've been skimming through every article I could find on this silly stunt, because so many people (though no one I know personally, thank goodness) are in such an uproar over it, and I wanted someone to explain to me why it was at all important. I finally found a column that expresses my feelings exactly. Something to talk about by Rod Smith

I shoot anyone around me who doesn't have his set to vibrate only. Usually in a non-vital body part, unless the ringtone is an actual tune of some sort. Then I take headshots.

Weapons of Mass Hysteria by Victor Davis Hanson "If anything, the war was about 100,000 corpses too late."

Easily my favourite line of the day, even though it's just half past noon.

Governor Granholm is pretty damn hot.

HUH? cavemn cavemn cavemn

Agreed.

Yes. Christians in general need to be taught the difference between free speech and harassment. Yes. Yes. Oh, I would. And if anyone threatened my child in any way he'd be in serious trouble.

Michael Jackson Hires Magical Anthropomorphic Giraffe As Defense Lawyer