re: Scalia just took your freedom to regulate deadly weapons in your community.

Just so we understand each other, I don't own a gun. Never have and probably never will. However, as previously stated, I have no problem with any law-abiding American owning a gun. It is a well-established part of our heritage, culture and Constitution. That some nitwits will use guns to perpetrate crime is inevitable. But you either have a free society, warts and all, or you make endless laws and restrictions covering every possible negative eventuality -- and then wring your hands because criminals, by definition, don't care about the law.

Scalia, who I loathe, didn't take away my freedom. I have no inherent "freedom" to restrict someone else's freedom. What you really don't like is what freedom entails: The possiblility that some aren't able to handle it properly. But the answer is hardly to create a society that is reduced to the lowest common denominator. Some people will stick a pencil in their eye. Do you ban pencils? Perhaps all sharp objects? It literally has no end.

The real problem with modern society is the idea that somehow all risk should be eliminated. We're fast becoming a nation of paranoid shut-ins.

My Rx: Throw out your TV. Go take a walk in the woods. Go to the beach. Swim. Scuba dive. Learn to fly. Travel. See the world. Quit wasting brain power worrying about the next random act of mayhem and just enjoy yourself. Life is a risk. There are no guarantees. Maybe you'll die in mad pursuit of some wild dream. Maybe you'll die slipping on a bar of soap. Whatever, as long as you do it as a free human being.

re: "the only purpose of a hand gun is to kill another human being"

Obviously false. My son's girlfriend loves target shooting with a pistol.

Here is an interesting piece that everyone should read from today's New York Times:

Gun Laws and Crime: A Complex Relationship

Do gun control laws reduce crime? Do they save lives? Is it possible they even cost lives?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29liptak.html?hp

Apparently, it's not all as simple as some would like to believe.

Larry Harmon, Who Popularized Bozo, Dies at 83

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/arts/television/04bozo.html?ref=obituaries

I'm frightened and confused...

A few quotes from this "consummate gentleman":

"I was with some Vietnamese recently, and some of them were smoking two cigarettes at the same time. That's the kind of customers we need!"

“You were the best qualified for that job, but they had to give it to a minority.”

"They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro." -- In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968

"All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction." -- After Mexicans protested his visit in 1986

"It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease." -- Justifying his refusal to give financial support to families of AIDS victims.

"Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches." -- 1995 radio broadcast

"She's a damn lesbian. I am not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine." -- Explaining why he was opposing the appointment of a woman for a cabinet post.

"The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian." -- 1995

"The University of Negroes and Communists" -- Reference to the University of North Carolina devised by Mr. Helms when he worked for Willis Smith's 1950 U.S. Senate campaign

"No, I do not. And neither do the people in the armed forces. Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." -- When asked in 1994 on CNN if he thought President Clinton was "up to the job" of serving as Commander-in-Chief