Summations Only

Ditto. I'm especially irked when someone jeers a civil, thoughtful post merely because they disagree.Sometimes someone clearly goes into a frenzy of jeer clicks, the jeers appearing rapidly, the jeered posts barely skimmed if read at all. It once made me think about those 1950s rats pushing buttons wired into their brains. The rats waste away, preferring the pleasure spikes to sustenance; it is more pleasurable (and easier) to jeer and sneer than to formulate a civil, thoughtful reply while expressing strong disagreement, and there is no sustenance in it for the mind.As to Iran and North Korea (just to add a dash of on-topic): They clearly recognized that the U.S. never risks intervention in a nuclear-armed state. Indeed, the world has learned that lesson, and American military adventurism undoubtedly promotes nuclear proliferation.As you say, every nation has every right, or at least rights as great as ours, to self-defense. If I governed a nation looked upon unfavorably by the U.S. in any way, I would make nuclear arms a top priority.But states like North Korea and Iran, I fear, are flies in the Mutually Assured Destruction ointment: it works great until some of the MAD players really are.Oops. I just meant to applaud your jeer-free and jeer-canceling policies.Cheers!

Their is a large contingent of non-jeer and low-jeer posters here: call it the silent majority.Everyone plays their own game.So if "the way the game is played" is how it has to be for you, then that is the game you choose to play.Didn't your mother ever ask you, "Well, would you jump off a cliff just because everyone else did? "

I truly didn't mean to single you out.Nonetheless, I cheer your honesty. I've done the same.Sorry to drag everyone off-topic: back to ~lurking.

You so funny punk because yo mama was so fat, when she sat around the house, she sat AROUND the house.Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

And your daddy was so ugly, your grandpa told your mama, "Honey, would you just f*** that boy so he'll take his ugly ass outta my house!?"

They know Jesus meant well, but they prefer to do what they think Jesus would do if he were in possession of all the facts.I call these folks "Old Testament Christians"--Prosperity Christians, Death Penalty Christians, etc.What Jesus required is hard...too hard. It's easier to stick with an eye for an eye, and to keep throwing stones

Bingo.I grew up in a Christian house. When I was a child, I shrank from the Old-blood-and-guts Testament, but was stunned by the New Testament, thinking, "This is what a true God would say we should do."I lifted my eyes from the Bible and couldn't find a single Christian in my world who genuinely tried to walk that talk.I never looked back. But I still esteem the moral and ethical brilliance, and the kindness and compassion, that Jesus taught.ICANT would scope Jesus as a dirty hippie commie (or an illegal) from 1000 meters and take him out with one shot.Then he'd go to church.

Except, of course, it does.Drive your car recklessly, and you will accumulate a record that drives your insurance rates to stratospheric levels. Many a foot has eased off their pedals after their owners' insurance rates went sky high.Financial penalties are the purest form of 21st century negative reinforcement. As I once observed to a friend, if cars were gods, we'd see the tens of thousands of lives we sacrificed to them every year more clearly, and we'd all be pedestrian Satanic rebels.So it is with guns. If we had to line up all the men, women and children killed by guns every year as we sustain our Wild West gun culture, and had to shoot them in the head en masse in public ceremony, gun control laws would pass tomorrow.You are, of course, free to disagree. But don't do it with blinders on.

Thanks for making that reply, NoNukes.I confess I found Jon's reply to my post such a stinking, reeking turd of intellectual dishonesty that I lost my appetite for the discussion.

Sooner.

You rested his case.

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Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

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China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Is it your contention that in these cases, 13 million, 20 million, and 100,000 guns, respectively, were seized by those governments?In other words, do you claim that these victims were previously armed? If not, you are just pairing arbitrary dates with arbitrary numbers--you've established no connection.The numbers may be "basically true"--it was a bloody century, full of bombs and guns--but your post hoc propter hoc argument is basically crap.Also, to most Americans, gun control means background checks and limits on weapons with mass assault capabilities; you cite histories that involved absolute bans on civilian ownership. I don't believe any of those populations were armed to any significant degree.Do you have any arguments that do not rely on logical fallacies and equivocation?

I think a world not armed to any significant degree is the goal of every sane human being.As to the gun control history, it remains a polemic, a screed, bankrupt in logic and slipshod in fact.I'd warrant the person who wrote it knows that about it and doesn't care, because it's merely a weapon of political and cultural war. The "technical truth" is less important than the "larger truth" of its partisanship.The bitter divorce between the right in America and evidence-based policies is the great political tragedy of our time.

If citizens disagree about the National Guard, do they fight it out in factions, first, then address the Guard?Can I make this determination whenever I encounter an armed agent of the state? You know, in a Founding Fathers-cheering-me- on kinda way? This getting a lot of people killed for freedom with guns is kinda fractally, works on all scales...

I could accept concealed carry nationwide if it started in court rooms, state legislatures, governors' offices and Congress--say a six month trial. That should do.No legislator should vote for guns on campuses and in churches (or, say, bars) if they're uncomfortable with me packing heat in the visitors gallery.WWJC?I have to think an Uzi, a tasteful nod to parentage and an always-appropriate classic for a Muscular Christ. He drives a sharp car and expects his flock to both prosper and deliver, the poor and the rich man alike tidily set aside, love and charity reserved for your own kind. With that nice tan you know a gold chain would really pop, and he'd look just like his downtown brother.