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"Guns are hugely attractive. They are perhaps the best-made consumer products we can buy. What else that you buy today will be functioning exactly as well 100 years from now as it is today? I actually think Michael Moore had it right in Bowling for Columbine. The problem in the United States isn't guns, it's fear – fear that serves many, many interests and thus will be hard to squelch."
-Dan Baum wrote a piece in the current Harper's about concealed-and not so concealed-weapons. He talks about it here. (For more on how easy it is to get a concealed weapon permit, see our handy guide.)
Condition White: a heightened state of awareness when you are carrying a firearm.
Condition Black: a heightened state of awareness of police shooting you when you are carrying a firearm.
Condition Plaid: a heightened state of awareness of the fashion police shooting you while carrying a firearm.
"An excellent fascinating read."
"Brilliant piece …"
"It was an excellent and important article"
Is this how Canadians ask critical questions!?
Condition Brown: a heightened state of awareness when a Border-Patrol firearm is pointed at you, forcing you to wade back across the river.
Condition Red: a heightened state of awareness when all of your friends are drenched in Red Blood, after the Cartel set a bomb off/drove by and sprayed 9mm rounds everywhere in the immediate vicinity and you may or may not have gotten hit.
NOW LET ME HEAR YOUR GUNS!!!
Being unafraid means no more firearm deaths from domestic violence and accidents and suicides and…
And also that mommies and daddiers never grow up and live forever.
I'm gonna repeat myself here, but – if Democrats could get over gun bans and instead focus on responsible gun ownership as a party plank, they'd lock down a lot of swing states and be able to kill one of the most effective issues against them. Especially with the SC rulings coming in now that are making outright bans untenable without a constitutional amendment.
I agree on this issue. Sometimes people get carried away and say things like, if we just abandon choice, civil rights, ladies' voting rights, and fully embrace evangelical christians and Dick Cheney then we cannot help but win…But with the guns…everyone in America is a cowboy.
I tend to agree with this. There are some voters- very real/not imagined by media machinations- where it literally is a single-issue stance for them (much like in the case of abortion.) They probably disagree with most/all of the party platforms otherwise. Hard to justify or explain, but the sentiment is there.
At this point it's basically a pragmatic issue. Banning guns is going to get a hell of a lot harder. Let's, as a party, move on. We're not going to be able to amend our way out of it, so let's just try and do our best to limit accidental deaths and then start trumpeting about how the democrats respect both the second AND the first amendments, so now who're you gonna vote for?
I must admit to reading "SC" as "South Carolina" upon first glance, and it took me an extra half-second to realize my mistake because "South Carolina" made perfect sense in the context of your sentence. Sigh.
(Don't Republicans complain about the Supreme Court as being overly liberal? Based on what recent decisions, exactly?)
Everyone complains about the Court being overly [not what I agree with]. It's asinine to assume that the extremely specific decisions they arrive at are "liberal" or "conservative", even if you assume that the two parties are the keepers of those particular faiths. Best example, off the top of my head, is eminent domain, which the court has had some major rulings on lately and which can be argued as either a conservative or liberal boogeyman.
I was at an art opening (no, not the Chris Burden type) in the suburbs and there was someone practicing their 'open-carry' right. I blurted out that someone was 'packing!' and then watched him for a while, watched people watching him for a while, and contemplated the type of individual who 'open-carries' around suburban kids.
Flatware.
That'll also function just as well in 100 years.
Rule Britannia!
I have a 100 year old chair that works just as well as it does the day it was made. Also, I can actually use it everyday for its intended purpose without starting a multistate manhunt.
I thought the Democrats wanted to build a majority to last 1000 years?
Butterscotch said "Being unafraid means no more firearm deaths from [...] suicides…"
Because it's a well-established fact that guns cause depression! And then, if we ban rope, we can also eliminate the second most common mechanism for suicide in the U.S. (Ok, that's a stretch. The 2nd most common mechanism is "hanging and suffocation". But my point is clear.)
Why don't people just admit that they don't like/are afraid of guns, rather than trumpeting about all of the Really Bad Things that are (inexplicably!) cause by guns?
If people really cared about stopping violence or suicide, they'd put their money and their time into substantive efforts to combat the issues themselves.
Of all the firearm related deaths in the U.S. each year, more than 1/2 are suicides. I'd LOVE to see a comparison in the resources spent improving mental health/treatment for depression and gun control.