notes from an Inauguration

[callmeslick]

What about penalizing people who use their firearm for self-defense?!

if you can afford the weapon, you can afford the ammo needed to practice. No sympathy here, as it is well documented here that I don't think most people need a firearm beyond a shotgun for self-defense....and, you can load your own shells there.

[Sergeant Thorne]

How can you be so arrogant? What does it matter what you think people need? Legally carried concealed pistols save the lives of people all across this country, and you want to tax their ammunition? And why? It's obvious from your reply that the goal is to reduce the use of it. That is manipulative and irresponsible.

[callmeslick]

[Sergeant Thorne]

Roll your eyes if you like. I'm trying to keep it civil.

[woodchip]

So you turn a blind eye to the division of voters between the haves and have nots?
You don't care about running guns to Mexican drug gangs and Obama issuing executive orders to hide it?

continuing to write fiction, I see. One day, you might be able to make a living at it.....

How about the diverse view that we need to be fiscally responsible? Sadly with Obama it is all about politics and so far I see no positive end result for the nation. Perhaps you would care to list what you think is positive.

if you cannot see for yourself, and clearly, you wear blinders, no sense me wasting the time to clarify. Sorry, if you can't stick to telling the truth, you aren't worth my time.

Obviously You once again post your entirely worthless commentary with no back up. Let this help you out:

"PRINCETON, NJ -- During his fourth year in office, an average of 86% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans approved of the job Barack Obama did as president. That 76-percentage-point gap ties George W. Bush's fourth year as the most polarized years in Gallup records."

So tell me slickster, how is the country going to be healed and get ahead with your liberal love pole in office?

[Will Robinson]

slick, the courts have ruled that trying to selectively use taxation to squelch free speech that the state didn't like was a violation of the 1st amendment.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment is an individual right.

Therefore, if you try to selectively tax ammo or certain gun type owners you are violating their 2nd amendment rights.
It probably runs right there with violation of the ban on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Certainly in spirit if not exactly.

As soon as you depart from trying to raise revenue from everyone and start using the power to tax to infringe on the constitutional rights of a select group of tax payers you are crossing the line into an illegal taxation and hopefully the courts will stop anyone like you from being able to pull off such a maneuver.

[Spidey]

I benefit mightily from the economy not going into a liquidity collapse in 2009, and an employment debacle with massive domino effects had the auto companies gone bankrupt without government intervention. Both events would have negatively impacted my net worth, which has more than doubled during the Obama administration(in real terms, actual cash value probably much more than doubled).

Auto bailout started under Bush.

I benefit as a citizen, and specifically, economically down the road, knowing that less people will be uninsured for basic medical coverage. A few less folks whose emergency room visits I will have to underwrite, and eventually, less of an unequal burden of costs on me to underwrite skewed pools limited only to sick people.

The exact same people who are doing the ER exploitation now, are going to be the ones who will be receiving taxpayer subsidized insurance, which will cost even more.

I know full well that it was military spending that brought the USSR down, and don't wish to see my nation go the same way..

Lol, yea “our” military spending.

[CobGobbler]

Spidey, we had nothing to do with the collapse of the soviet union. Communism doesn't work, they collapsed on their own. They were our biggest enemy so Reagan took credit for it. Ok, I'll dig it. Let him have it.

I'm serious. Triple the price of ammunition, all these douches that are loading up on weapons should pay a little extra. Hell, it might make the people wanting to kill a little less likely to do so. I don't know, what the ★■◆●, I'm drinking yuengling tonight like it's ★■◆●ing water, country needs to be right. Who cares? What time is it? Is tom and jerry on?

Maybe tomorrow all the solutions will be here. I hate this ★■◆●ing divison. You know what? Woodchip and Will would probably be pretty cool to have a beer with, and yet I'm here hating on all that. Why is Al Franken a better Senator than Barack Obama ever was? Damn it, nothing makes sense. You know what? My girl told me tonight that she was a man's girl on the side for a while. I learned this after hearing untold amounts of woman anger towards cheating people, but she was in on it. I hate it all. I hate you all. Well, all except for woodchip. I think he and I should drink some moonshine together.

[woodchip]

Cob, if you and I sat down and drank, there'd be so much bull★■◆● spread that it would take a municipal sized street cleaner to clear the floor

[callmeslick]

slick, the courts have ruled that trying to selectively use taxation to squelch free speech that the state didn't like was a violation of the 1st amendment.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment is an individual right.

Therefore, if you try to selectively tax ammo or certain gun type owners you are violating their 2nd amendment rights.
It probably runs right there with violation of the ban on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Certainly in spirit if not exactly.

As soon as you depart from trying to raise revenue from everyone and start using the power to tax to infringe on the constitutional rights of a select group of tax payers you are crossing the line into an illegal taxation and hopefully the courts will stop anyone like you from being able to pull off such a maneuver.

However, given that one of the arguments made for having a gun is to be able to fight for personal liberty and the Constitution, I had reason to pause and think last night. I was catching up on DVR saves from when I was away yesterday and I watched Bill Maher's show from last weekend. Bill pointed out that the one thing that seems to pass in a truly bipartisan manner is further rules regarding privacy. The most recent, in December, enabled the government to keep any record, on any citizen, FOREVER. Forever! Coupled with previous stuff going back to the Patriot Act bills, that means that the government can access your mail, your reading habits, your internet usage, your phone calls and your personal contacts and travel details. And now, they can keep those records.....I repeat....FOREVER. Therefore, the argument that gun owners make that they are sitting on their porches protecting our liberty is bogus. We have lost the most fundamental liberty of all: PRIVACY. And, as Maher put it well: that makes the US sort of like a strip club with 45 Million bouncers and no strippers.

[callmeslick]

Cob, if you and I sat down and drank, there'd be so much **** spread that it would take a municipal sized street cleaner to clear the floor

[Will Robinson]

slick, the courts have ruled that trying to selectively use taxation to squelch free speech that the state didn't like was a violation of the 1st amendment.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment is an individual right.

Therefore, if you try to selectively tax ammo or certain gun type owners you are violating their 2nd amendment rights.
It probably runs right there with violation of the ban on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Certainly in spirit if not exactly.

As soon as you depart from trying to raise revenue from everyone and start using the power to tax to infringe on the constitutional rights of a select group of tax payers you are crossing the line into an illegal taxation and hopefully the courts will stop anyone like you from being able to pull off such a maneuver.

However, given that one of the arguments made for having a gun is to be able to fight for personal liberty and the Constitution, I had reason to pause and think last night. I was catching up on DVR saves from when I was away yesterday and I watched Bill Maher's show from last weekend. Bill pointed out that the one thing that seems to pass in a truly bipartisan manner is further rules regarding privacy. The most recent, in December, enabled the government to keep any record, on any citizen, FOREVER. Forever! Coupled with previous stuff going back to the Patriot Act bills, that means that the government can access your mail, your reading habits, your internet usage, your phone calls and your personal contacts and travel details. And now, they can keep those records.....I repeat....FOREVER. Therefore, the argument that gun owners make that they are sitting on their porches protecting our liberty is bogus. We have lost the most fundamental liberty of all: PRIVACY. And, as Maher put it well: that makes the US sort of like a strip club with 45 Million bouncers and no strippers.

That's all well ang good but you are looking at the role of the gun in that scenario all wrong. The ability to keep and bear arms wasn't ever expected to stop the government from taking liberty all by itself...thus other rights were listed and MUCH talk was made of the notion that listing any might be construed as not protecting others that didn't get their own unique listing. It is the collection of them all that was supposed to protect us. The right to assemble and engage in free speech would be neccessary to use guns in an effective way against a threat....

The gun was to be a tool to use in revolt and as a deterrence that keeps tyrants from running down the citizens on a whim.
The fact that 200 million people have 300 million guns is a very serious deterrence. Without that deterrence it would be much much easier to physically intimidate the citizens into accepting all sorts of heavy handed social engineering by a tyrannical leader.

I would like you to consider something honestly. Go into total objective mode....be an intelligent alien who studies us from afar..
If instead of school shooters we had crazy people using automobiles occasionally to run down children on playgrounds. And at Sandy Hook 20 kids and 6 teachers were killed under the wheels of an Escalade, do you think there would be any talk about limiting the size of vehicles to the size of a smart car'?

I think that the focus of the efforts would be where it should be now, on mental health, care, reporting, peer involvement issues, all sorts of things.

Guns are a scary thing to those who don't own and use them so they are like snakes in the grass. Still just one of natures creatures that might invade your garden but much easier to see them killed than a bunny rabbit. But wipe out the snakes and the rats thrive.
Add to that the political football that they have become and all of a sudden the rush is on to eradicate the gun from our midst.

There are serious problems with that goal and its potential results but the political payoff squelches any rational examination of the proposed 'solution'. If the pop culture and media mouth pieces happened to be on the other side of the debate you would be seeing an endless barrage of reports, documentaries and Bill Mahr types all telling America about those problems with a knee jerk ban on Americans best tool for defense from numerous threats large and small.

Your desire to tax gun owners into hardship is a petty, irrational response out of frustration. We need solutions to the ease for which the wrong people can get there hands on our guns for sure. However, the government is on that list of 'wrong people' so please consider maintaining that important piece of our already eroded defense mechanism!

[Spidey]

Bill Maher…now there’s a credible source.

Wait……….I forgot something………..

[callmeslick]

Bill Maher…now there’s a credible source.

Wait……….I forgot something………..

hell, you can gems of insight from all over. If he's right, he's right, and in this particular example, I think he's right.