Robert Kuntz enlightens the idiot libs thusly: "There is no “gun show loophole" . . . . . . . Citizens who are not licensed gun dealers are permitted to sell their guns to other private citizens and there is NO requirement that they conduct a background check anywhere at any time – at the gun show or over their kitchen tables."

Sounds like a loophole to me, Robert. You're saying that anyone in America -- no matter how crazy, or how violent their past, or how many felonies they've been convicted of -- can simply go to a gun show and buy all the guns they want? Thus making a mockery of all current gun control laws (which are already a joke, in that one can simply drive from a city like DC into a state like Virginia, buy a gun, and be back again in time for lunch)?

Jeez, no wonder "gun control" hasn't worked. But you didn't say what you'd prefer we call this loophole (that allows gun shows to make a mockery of all existing gun control laws).

This is a rare article + thread that has changed my beliefs. I came in sure that gun control is a pointless issue for Dems. I was given pause by the knowledge that the advice to stay silent on school shootings originated with Daschle & Gephardt ("The Great Appeasers"), Terry McAuliffe, Joe "Bush-Cheney 2000" Lieberman, and Zell "The Duelist" Miller -- not exactly the leading lights on the Left, then or now. (Oh and by the way, how DID things work out for John Kerry and his courting of red state gun "enthusiasts" in '04?)

I was turned around by Alex Koppelman's reporting on the expired assault weapons ban, and poster Robert Kuntz's accidental reporting on the "dont call it a gun show" loophole. I now believe it is wrong for the Democratic Party NOT to call for the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban and for the closing of the "don't call it a gun show" loophole. These are limited acts that will have a real effect in stopping the slaughter of America's school children and college students; are the right thing to do; and can be winners in re '08.

Hold on just one g-darn minute. We don't know what the 2A really says, because the last big 2A case was way back in 1939. (It didn't go the gun owner's way.) Which just might explain why the gun lobby hasn't sponsored a case to the U.S. Supreme Court in the last seventy years. One would think that if the NRA seriously believed that every redneck has an absolute individual right to an arsenal of assault weapons and cop-killer bullets it could have managed to get a case before the court and get its ruling. Yet curiously, it hasn't.

This might be about to change. A 3-judge federal appeals court panel last month struck down D.C.'s gun control laws on 2A grounds; and while it was also a 3-judge panel that ruled against "god" in the pledge of allegiance (later overturned by the full court), there is a chance this case could reach the Supremes before the end of the decade. The fact that D.C. is not a state might give the judges and justices an easy way out; but there is still a chance that we may a long last know the modern meaning of "a well-regulated militia."

Then we will know whether the 2A must be repealed in order to stop gun massacres. Till then, it distresses me when even people who are against the slaughter of school children and college students eagerly "admit" that the 2A says what the gun lobby claims it says. It's like "admitting" the media has a liberal bias because we hear ABOUT that liberal bias every time we turn on the TV or radio or open up a newspaper or newsmagazine.

Militant Agnostic writes, "Those thirteen words ["A well-regulated militia . . . "] that begin the 2nd amendment are the ones that our Supreme Court tend to ignore, deciding time and again that the right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than, as indicating by the beginning clause, a collective right (which, as written, it most clearly is)."

Agnostic, would you please cite the decision(s) to which you are referring? I ask because I am aware of no such decision. As I pointed out earlier, the last time the U.S.S.Ct. even considered the 2A was way back in 1939 -- and that case (which I read as saying the 2A protects the right of STATES to provide for state militias) held against the gun owner.

It's bad enough that gun nuts pollute the public debate following each new gun massacre with their fanciful talking points. It's much worse when someone like you (who seems to actually care about stopping the insane slaughter of school children and college students) makes the gun nuts' case for them. You're as bad as a liberal who begins an argument by saying, "Granted, Bush (Jr.) is a strong and decisive leader, but . . . "