Another major school shooting today ... Newtown, Conn

Christmas trees in homes cause around four deaths a year so do you wish to give up Christmas trees Firefly. Do you value having them in homes more then human lives?

Lot of things I myself value over human life such as driving a car where cars kills tens of thousands a year , having engineering projects such as dams and bridges that it is known will result in a certain numbers of deaths to put in place.

Footnote the last man killed in putting up the Hoover Dam was the son of the first man killed on the project.

Having fire even that get out of control and killed thousands a year.

So Firefly how must of what you own and used ever day would you care to give up due to having them is known to cause deaths year in and year out.

One factor the gun lobby has on Ignore, as well it might, is the amount of anxiety created by the presence of 300 million guns and the economic, social and biological implications of that anxiety. Pharmaceuticals to deaden it, escapist behaviour to minimise it returning to consciousness and treatments for cellular malfunction which anxiety is said by some scientists to cause.

On top of all the other anxieties which modern life creates. Aging, failure, the afterlife, bogeymen, getting sand kicked in the face, and suchlike. "Cool" is admired precisely because it is a sign of low anxiety. Assuming it's not faked I mean.

The distribution of anxiety levels is likely to be similar to the distribution of height on a Boltzmann curve. The ones who are unfit to own a gun are on one end, like 7 footers, and those who don't give a flying **** are on the other. AQ one might say. Anxiety Quotient. Except that intelligence can't be altered. An AQ of 100 is moveable. A 100 AQ in Syria at this time being different from a 100 AQ taken of motorists in a traffic jam or Morris dancers after 10 pints.

There are agencies increasing anxiety in order to profit from offering palliatives to it. It would be impossible to argue that the medical profession has not caused an increase in anxiety despite how wonderful each individual member of it is. And the NRA is exactly the same. So is the fashion industry. They are all it it. Make you nervous and sell you the cure.

I'm not an economist by any means but with the slight knowledge I have of such matters I would guess that if anxiety levels were low the $16.5 trillion deficit would be a massive surplus and growing because nobody could be arsed with the effort required to squander it.

Anxiety has to be artificial now because the natural anxieties have been successfully treated by the agricultural and mechanical industries. I have met ladies who are so anxious that the curtains don't match the carpet that they drive from shop to shop to find something more aesthetically satisfying.

Which is a slight expansion on the Pope's Christmas message about us all taking things a bit easier.

Not too easy mind you. We don't want the DOW in single figures do we?

You live in a fantasy land Firefly and a dishonest land at that.

Red flags.........ongoing red flags.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting

Investigations before and after the shooting discovered e-mail communications between Hasan and the Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.[12]

officials at Walter Reed Medical Center repeatedly expressed concern about Hasan's behavior during the entire six years he was there; Hasan's supervisors gave him poor evaluations and warned him that he was doing substandard work. In early 2008 (and on later occasions), several key officials met to discuss what to do about Hasan. Attendees of these meetings reportedly included the Walter Reed chief of psychiatry, the chairman of the USUHS Psychiatry Department, two assistant chairs of the USUHS Psychiatry Department (one of whom was the director of Hasan's psychiatry fellowship), another psychiatrist, and the director of the Walter Reed psychiatric residency program. According to NPR, fellow students and faculty were "deeply troubled" by Hasan's behavior, which they described as "disconnected," "aloof," "paranoid," "belligerent," and "schizoid."[69]

Once, while presenting what was supposed to be a medical lecture to other psychiatrists, Hasan talked about Islam, and said that, according to the Koran, non-believers would be sent to hell, decapitated, set on fire, and have burning oil poured down their throats. A Muslim psychiatrist in the audience raised his hand, and challenged Hasan's claims.[70] According to the Associated Press, Hasan's lecture also "justified suicide bombings."[71] In the summer of 2009, he was transferred to Fort Hood.

Hasan expressed admiration for the teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia between 2000 and 2002.[81] Considered moderate then, Al-Awlaki appeared to become radicalized after 2006 and was under surveillance. After Hasan wrote nearly 20 emails to him between December 2008 and June 2009, he was investigated by the FBI. In one, Hasan wrote: "I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a military analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, suggested that Hasan was "either offering himself up or [had] already crossed that line in his own mind." Hasan asked al-Awlaki when jihad is appropriate, and whether it is permissible if innocents are killed in a suicide attack.[82]

Hasan expressed admiration for the teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia between 2000 and 2002.[81] Considered moderate then, Al-Awlaki appeared to become radicalized after 2006 and was under surveillance. After Hasan wrote nearly 20 emails to him between December 2008 and June 2009, he was investigated by the FBI. In one, Hasan wrote: "I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a military analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, suggested that Hasan was "either offering himself up or [had] already crossed that line in his own mind." Hasan asked al-Awlaki when jihad is appropriate, and whether it is permissible if innocents are killed in a suicide attack.[82]

Army employees were informed of the contacts at the time, but they believed that the emails were consistent with Hasan's professional mental health research about Muslims in the armed services, as part of his master's work in Disaster and Preventive Psychiatry.[83] A DC-based joint terrorism task force operating under the FBI was notified, and the information reviewed by one of its Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) employees, who concluded there was not sufficient information for a larger investigation.[84] Higher-ups at the Department of Defense stated they were not notified of such investigations before the shootings.[85]

That's interesting... we've gone from guns to a single mass shooting.
McVeigh killed 168
Mass shootings in 2012 alone killed 151.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-victims-2012
Guns have killed more in people in the US in mass murders since 1990 than fertilizer bombs.
More people have died in mass murders in the US since 1990 with guns than with gasoline.

That leaves us with 9/11. Yes, 3000 people died. I don't recall hearing of more than one person that may have died from a box cutter. Several died from plane crashes. Some from fire. Some from smoke inhalation. Some from building collapse. What exactly are you alleging the weapons was that killed them?

Caught the daily show last night (our time)

Jaw still on ground.
part1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-16-2013/there-goes-the-boom---atf
part2
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-16-2013/there-goes-the-boom

Don't want to give any spoilers but I'm certainly viewing the 'we have enough laws just police them' stance from the NRA in a new light. Or is it dark?

Christmas trees kill 4 people.
Guns kill 30,000 people

What an idiotic comparison Bill.

You live in a fantasy land Bill that ff is a serious threat to your position.

I can't say you are dishonest because I don't think you are aware of it. I think you just take the line of least resistance. Which, when you think about it, is what a gun does.

The science of Big Data in relation to the rapidly lowering cost of certain aspects of the Genome Project ($10 a test) is moving towards identifying those unfit to be granted a gun licence simply from a sample of their DNA with a progressively diminishing margin of error.

Are you in favour of gun applications being accompanied by a DNA sample?

Nope. If you don't have a militia on hand, you cannot restrict the Second Amendment to members of that militia.





Oh yes I can. And you can't do a thing about it.

The Constitution protects the right of non-militiamen to carry handguns when they go about in public.





The Constitution says that non-militiamen have the right to carry handguns when they go about in public.





Your childish insults are a poor substitute for a well-thought-out argument based on facts.

Wrong. Obama is not a dictator. He needs Congress to pass laws.

And on the issue of passing gun control laws, he has already been stopped.

Yes, he will stay in office for four years. It's going to be four years of piteous whining about how terrible it is that no one will let him violate our rights.

(Earplugs might be in order.)

Because it makes it too burdensome for people to exercise their rights.





There is no right to drive cars. There is a right to carry handguns when you go about in public.

No, it's going to be another 20 years of your whining about how everyone wants to violate your rights.

We'll see. The devil is in the details, and the descriptions of many of his orders have been too vague to determine whether or not they violate the Constitution.

Obama is a nasty little bugger, and I would not be surprised if he tried to slip some Constitutional violations into some of his orders.

If it turns out that he has, look for the courts to overturn those orders.

Court challenges are guaranteed. But perhaps not the NRA. Their area of expertise is voting Congressmen out of office.

The Second Amendment Foundation is much better in the arena of the courts.

If Mr. Gura takes the case, that will be the best of all.

I've been meaning to talk to some people and try to pick up hints as to what Mr. Gura's next goals are in the courts, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Let's hear it oralloy--Are you in favour of gun ownership being dependent on providing a DNA sample?

A matter, with us now thanks to science, the Founding Fathers had no possibly way of understanding or legislating for.

You claimed to answer questions. Answer that.

One mass shooting not combining them all together......and firearms come in as a very poor fourth or so on the list of means to do the most mass murders at any one time.

In a way it is damn good thing that such killers do not at least as yet turn to more effected means of killing large numbers of people at anyone time then firearms.

T

That was the weapons they used to seized the planes that in turn cause all those deaths. Not a firearm in sight.

So all those thousands did indeed died due to box cutters as without those weapons no one would had died.

Nonsense but if such a thing was possible and declared someone a mass murderer to be we could just then executed him on the spot.

Bad science fiction indeed.

Are the police going to be mandated to have these "safety features" on all their guns?

LOL!

Do they have a "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" version?