StrangeSox

when did we start naming winter storms?

I can't agree to that entirely because "people who should have guns" isn't usually a well-defined or even a even possible to be pre-defined group. Any good gun policy will netted need to be multi-faceted to address the different issues of straw purchases, overall availability and the lethality available.

Via less guns in the hands of everyone. You don't know who the "wrong person" is until they're shooting someone over crappy pizza or loud music or taking their mother's guns and killing 26 people. We don't have pre-cogs.

Just another Law abiding citizen (until he wasn't)

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 08:40 PM) Awww look, its trolling now. Ironic.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 08:38 PM) Because defending myself in life or death situation is TOTALLY the same as shooting a guy at a Little Ceasars because I have to wait 5 minutes for a pizza. I love how you've turned anyone with a gun into a crazed lunatic that can go off at any moment. Let's ignore the fact that there are 300+ million guns and tens of millions of gun owners out there, let's focus on the less than 1% that does stupid s***. Yes, let's focus on the people who end up harming or killing others because of their easy access to guns.that is the point. Less guns = less gun violence, meaning you have less things to defend yourself against in first place.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 08:23 PM) You've obviously never been the victim of a violent crime. Don't worry, if you live in Chicago or frequent other gun-free zones you will be. I've also never been shot over pizza. Though i suppose it would have been better if they were both armed, right?

^ another example of toxic gun culture

I got a response from Durbin hank you for your message about Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) and the federal deficit reduction negotiations. I appreciate hearing from you. Social Security benefits are adjusted annually to reflect inflation. The annual Social Security COLA is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures price increases for market-based goods and services. The COLA is designed to help seniors keep up with the increase in costs we all face from year to year. The Social Security COLA is computed from the third quarter of one year to the third quarter of the next. Beginning in January 2013, Social Security benefits will increase by 1.7 percent. Social Security does not add a penny to the federal deficit, and the system is currently generating a surplus in tax revenues. Its board of trustees has said it will make every promised payment for the next 21 years. Any conversation about changes to the Social Security COLA should be had outside the confines of deficit reduction and the fiscal cliff. Many Americans have a tough time getting by with little or no yearly increases to Social Security. I will keep your concerns in mind as Congress considers Social Security COLAs in the future. Thank you again for sharing your views with me. Please feel free to keep in touch. Sincerely, Richard J. Durbin United States Senator

Good, that plan is terrible. I don't care who undermines it. Like most of these "centrist" or "panel" "deficit" plans, it's mostly about cutting taxes for the wealthy overall and gutting entitlements.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 04:01 PM) GMAFB. Let's overreact a little more, please? GMAFB, let's reduce the number and availability of guns and where they can be carried while loaded so that we don't have more "overreactions" like this. You yourself said you'd rather go down shooting, damn the statistics and any 'mistakes' or flawed judgement be damned

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 08:54 PM) Why should they be. They are using an advertising ploy to get people to buy one of their products which is legal. Don't blame a company for trying to make money legally. I will blame them for perpetuating our terrible "obviously compensating for something" gun culture that breeds vigilanteism. edit: just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral or that it's above criticism. Beyond the obvious gun culture, "tacticool" problems, the entire campaign was pretty damn sexist.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 03:56 PM) And who knows if the law flashed through his mind when deciding to pull the trigger while we're at it. probably not. a man who shoots someone at little ceasars because they're yelling about slow pizza is not thinking rationally. hell, a man who gets pizza from little ceasars isn't thinking rationally absolutely.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 03:49 PM) Making a defense because the defense is available in law =/= legalization of murder, no matter how many times you try this argument. A doubt that SYG will work here, but it's another example of the presence of a gun making a situation much, much worse, not better.

The conservative blogosphere is in all sorts of ginned-up OUTRAGE!!!! over Erik Loomis's tweet that he would like Wayne Lapierre's "head on a stick." It started with Glenn Reynolds taking this statement literally and lambasting Loomis, despite having called for "heads to roll" himself over Benghazi. This eventually reached Michelle Malkin and her twitter machine Twitchy, and then exploded. Loomis has had the State Police come to his house after someone reported that he made death threats. He had to have meetings with his dean. The President at the University of Rhode Island, where Loomis teaches, issued a cowardly letter that did not stand behind Loomis. Crooked Timber has an excellent post up on what a sham this whole situation is and urging people to, respectfully, contact the URI administration and urge them to support Loomis against these absurd attacks: Wayne LaPierre is the head of the National Rifle Association. It seems obvious to us that when Loomis called for LaPierre’s head on a stick, he had in mind something like this from the Urban Dictionary: Ever since putting someone’s head on a stick ceased to be a routine form of public punishment—indeed, the last instance of it we can think of is fictional (Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, though it references an actual event from the French Revolution)—calling for someone’s head has been a fairly conventional way to express one’s outrage or criticism. Two months ago, for example, right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds voiced his anger over the State Department’s lax provision of security in Benghazi by demanding, “Can we see some heads roll?” Yet that very same Glenn Reynolds is now accusing Loomis of using “eliminationist rhetoric.” Other conservative voices have joined in. The Daily Caller says Loomis “unleashed a flurry of profanity-ridden tweets demanding death for National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre.” Townhall put Loomis’s tweets in the context of NRA members and leaders getting death threats. And just this morning, Michelle Malkin wrote at National Review Online: This campaign has now brought Loomis into the crosshairs of the state and his employer. Loomis has already been questioned by the Rhode Island State Police, who told him that someone had informed the FBI that Loomis had threatened LaPierre’s life. Loomis also has been hauled into a meeting with his dean. And now the president of the University of Rhode Island, where Loomis teaches, has issued the following statement: We do not expect any better of the orchestrators of this campaign—this is what they have done for many years, and doubtless will be doing for years to come. We do expect better of university administrators. Rather than standing behind a member of their faculty, the administration has sought to distance the university from Loomis. Even to suggest that Loomis’s tweet constitutes a “threat of violence” is an offense against the English language. We are dismayed that the university president completely fails to acknowledge the importance of academic freedom and of scholars’ freedom independently to express views (even intemperate ones) on topics of public importance. This statement—unless it is swiftly corrected— should give alarm to scholars at the University of Rhode Island, to scholars who might one day consider associating themselves with this institution, and to academic and professional associations that value academic freedom. However, this is not merely a question of academic freedom. It also speaks to a broader set of rights to speak freely without the fear of being fired for controversial views that many of us have been flagging for years. Everyone should be clear what is going on. As a blogger at Atrios has pointed out, what the witch hunters want is for Loomis to be fired. Indeed, the calls have already begun (see comment thread here). Though Loomis has a union, his lack of tenure makes him vulnerable. We insist that the University of Rhode Island take a strong stand for the values of academic freedom and freedom of speech, that it not be intimidated by an artificially whipped-up media frenzy, that it affirm that the protections of the First Amendment require our collective enforcement, and that all employers—particularly, in this kind of case, university employers—have a special obligation to see that freedom of speech become a reality of everyday life. We urge all of you to contact the following three administrators at the University of Rhode Island: Be polite, be civil, be firm. We also call upon all academic and other bloggers to stand in support of Loomis. We invite others who wish to associate themselves with this statement to say so in the comments section to this post, and to republish this statement elsewhere. Chris Bertram, University of Bristol Michael Bérubé, The Pennsylvania State University Henry Farrell, George Washington University Kieran Healy, Duke University Jon Mandle, SUNY Albany John Quiggin, University of Queensland Corey Robin, Brooklyn College Brian Weatherson, University of Michigan

Doing nothing means the entirety of the Bush taxcuts expire. The sequester also exempts the entitlement programs that Democrats should be fighting hardest to protect, like SS, Medicare and TANF (foodstamps). There's substantial defense cuts. Democrats have the Senate and the White House. Their majority in one gets stronger next year and they close the gap a little bit in the House. I don't know how you can say that their reelection isn't threatened by this negotiation. The country in general soured on Republicans after the debt ceiling fiasco and are much, much more likely to hold Republicans responsible for this one as well.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 02:47 PM) That's interesting, but I think lumping suicides in the gun conversation is kind of silly. If you want to kill yourself, you're most likely gonna kill yourself, whether you have access to a gun or not. You're much more likely to be successful with a gun it seems, though.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:49 AM) South Korea, Japan, Finland, France, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway all are and I'm pretty sure all those countries have much more stringent gun laws otoh: men are much more likely to attempt suicide with a gun and thus be successful http://www.afsp.org/files/College_Film//factsheets.pdf

that might have been posted in the other thread but yeah, after a big long post lamenting how we just can't do anything to stop these terrible tragedies, she recommends people rushing the shooters. I think Chait was the first in the blog-world to highlight that: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/...tion-award.html

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 12:14 PM) Yeah I don't buy that and the Supreme Court isn't held to technical readings of their opinions like that. Heller stands for the fact that you have a constitutional right to have a gun but that no constitutional right is absolute. They're not going to allow a back door restriction that still limits your right to own a gun unless it meets that strict scrutiny standard. That was the importance and one of the reasons the 7th circuit just overturned Illinois' law - banning guns to anywhere but your home is unconstitutional. they allowed the NFA etc. to stand, so conceivably they would allow a well-crafted AWB to stand. At the same time, there's still that backstop that, no, you don't have to worry about them banning every gun as a next step (so long as the court makeup stays the same). Somewhere on here, maybe the Republican thread, I linked to a piece wondering if Posner is really just trolling the SCOTUS here. He was decidedly against the Heller ruling and may be making a reducto ad absurdum ruling. I could see Posner doing that. edit: can't find it, maybe i didn't post it here

You can go over the cliff for negotiating purposes (eliminate Bush tax cuts) and then walk it back after-the-fact. There will be short-term market concerns there for sure, but they'll be pricing that in before Jan. 1 if they aren't already. The real issue is if we do nothing about it for the entire year. As far as I understand it, we really don't have to cut any spending in January if we don't want to. Year-long spending can be shifted forward as-if we never went off the cliff and then adjusted once a deal is made.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 12:11 PM) Fantasy? I would've gotten the f*** out of there even if I was carrying. My chances would still be better running than getting a firefight. But if there was nowhere to run, yea I'd rather have a gun in that situation and so would you. I'd rather work to craft public policy such that there's no gun in that situation, and thus no situation, in the first place.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 11:47 AM) A lot more than 26 people have been killed by the AR platform. That doesn't change the intended function of the weapon or how quickly it would lose its killing effectiveness if someone was there to stop this loon. The intended function of the AR platform is to kill things, not to wound them. Whether or not it is as effective at that goal as some would like isn't relevant to the design intent.

Interesting post over at poly-sci blog Monkey Cage, putting forth the case that Heller could actually make it easier to enact gun control laws as it provides a strong backstop on any slippery slope.

We need to arm the Good Guys with guns to stop the Bad Guys who want to shoot other Good Guys defining Good Guys and Bad Guys prior to any specific incident is left as an exercise to the reader If the only way to stop gun violence in this country is to arm more and more people with guns, then there's something deeply, deeply wrong with this country.