"...there are indeed limits to how much we can change our driving habits, before further improvements get increasingly difficult."

We may not be able to curb our driving too much more, given the logistics for most folks of getting from their suburban homes to work, school and stores, so the only possible way to make further improvements to the individual's bottom line is to cut back on discretionary spending. This, of course, further fuels the incipient economic collapse. It's a viscious cycle downwards.

My own feeling is that we are now in a state of permnanent economic decline. The society we live in is entirely based upon the perpetual availability of uber-cheap fossil fuels. Airlines, automakers and others whose business plans have such an assumption at their core are already hurting or going belly up. When the price of fuel begins to interrupt the flow of food to supermarket shelves by virtue of the fact that it is delvered via gas-guzzling 18-wheelers that can no longer be operated profitably, look out. We're talking instant starvation for millions.

What's coming down the pike isn't a hydrogen powered vehicle -- it's starving, desperate hordes of suburbanites.

When, exactly, were they ever "great"?

In my lifetime, the GOP has given us Nixon the criminal, Reagan the senile criminal, Bush Sr. the criminal, and W the criminal.

And those are just the ones who sat in the Oval office.

In the V.P. slot there was Spiro Agnew the criminal, Bush Sr. the criminal, Dan Quayle the clueless idiot, and Dick Cheney, the criminal.

I could go on down the list to the many cabinet officers, political appointees, senators and congressmen whose crimes and misdemeanors are the stuff of legend, but you get the idea.

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

-Dan Quayle

...we live in a country whose government is thoroughly and utterly corrupt. What remains is only the illusion of democracy -- the idea that we have a choice -- when in fact, whether Republican or Democrat sits in high office, the MIC pulls all the strings.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Frankly, given the way things have gone with the criminal Bush Administration and our drift toward a fascist police state, the continuing loss of privacy and basic Constitutional rights, I'm more concerned about the government having guns than the average citizen.

A well-armed population has become essential in order to protect us -- not from some outside threat, but from our own out-of-control government.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

-Abraham Lincoln

re: "everyone in Iraq owned assault weapons when Saddam was in charge...did that make them free?"

Since they never enjoyed anything resembling American-style freedom in the first place, having a gun, per se, did not magically "make them free". However, we in America are watching as our rights and freedoms are being systematically dismantled by an increasingly fascist government in an increasingly police-state atmosphere. I fear our government (and their hired mercenaries, like Blackwater) a helluva lot more than I do some random criminal or terrorist. Having a gun may not be a total answer to creeping totalitarianism, but it will certainly give the populace as a whole a tool to resist that may give the fascists pause.

Aside from any of this, I simply believe in freedom. I have no issue with freedom-loving, law-abiding American citizens owning guns. As far as criminal gun violence, I hardly think that having even a total ban on all guns (in this country, at least) would make a damn bit of difference. Criminals by definition aren't concerned with the law, so telling them that having a gun is illegal and expecting that therefore they will comply is delusional.

re: "why can states ban sales of C4 and not handguns, and who gets to decide?"

There is a long, unbroken history of individual gun ownership in American society. Rightly or wrongly, the gun was used throughout our history, particularly as an indispensable tool during the westward expansion -- for hunting (mainly) and, yes, also fighting. We are a nation with a frontier heritage. Guns are as American as (insert item of Americana here).

C-4 plastic explosive, on the other hand, is an item that has never been in general use, or even available to civilian individuals. Neither have tanks, bazookas, or nuclear weapons.

Insofar as items that any given state may ban, frankly, I think there are far too many. Marijuana comes to mind. Why should anyone want it banned? It’s harmless and virtually everyone has tried it, including several Presidents.

The question boils down to freedom. I want freedom. I don’t want Big Brother monitoring my activities. I do not want to harm anyone else, so whatever I might choose to do is no one’s business. I wish to God people in this country worried more about simple privacy rights and actual government intrusion into our lives rather than hypothetical criminal violence that may or may not ever even affect them.

This is America. Freedom is messy and not for the weak-kneed. The alternative is living under the increasingly fascist police state we are witnessing unfold.

You want safety? Build yourself an underground bunker -- and hope that Der Führer doesn't decide you are an enemy of the state.

For myself, I'd rather take my chances with freedom.