If you're adamant that guns need to be taken out of the hands of American citizens, step up and do something about it on one level where you might make a difference. If you work in an office building that is patrolled by armed guards (not the police), demand that they be disarmed. If your child attends a school that has armed guards patrolling the area (once again, not the police), demand that they stop using guns as they go about their duties. If you're wealthy and utilize the services of armed bodyguards, demand that they stop carrying firearms (of course this includes any celebrities). If you're a politician at the local, state or national level and you support gun control initiatives that would severely limit the ability of the average, law-abiding citizen to legally acquire and possess firearms, step up and demand that your security patrol service no longer includes guns on it's inventory of tools. If it's good enough for some of us, it's good enough for all of us.

This seems to be a reoccurring point in many posts (not only in reply to this article), but I'd point out that by law the National Guard and the various State Guards are militias.

Bad form, Salon.

This is not a defense of the WH staff, but it is possible to delete an e-mail and not have a copy of it hanging around. If the WH uses a client/server e-mail system (such as Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server), a user who connects to their mailbox on the e-mail server with their client does have control over their own mailbox on the e-mail database on the server. If they send or receive an e-mail, delete it permanently before the e-mail database on the server is backed up to a another location or medium, and do not move a copy of it to their local PC or network share then there is not a copy of the e-mail just sitting around on the server. Of course, everyone who has a copy of the e-mail would have to do the same thing for it to be completly gone.

Now, if the WH is using an automatic e-mail archiving system which would move a copy of every e-mail sent and received in the system to another location, the previously described scenario does not apply. The copy of the e-mail would also have to be deleted from the archiving location for it to truly be "gone".

Also, if the written policy (if strictly followed) of the WH to delete all e-mail after 30 days falls within the stated period of the laws that cover their electronic communications, they have not done anything legally wrong by setting 30 days as the time period for retention.