Letters to the Editor
curmudgeon2
Published Letters: 414 Editor's Choice: 64
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So it's OK for only Bush's Police Forces to have guns...
[Read the article: Gun control or "hopes and prayers"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gun control means that only those reliable and faithful to the government will have guns. It's like public financing of elections, the government decides who gets to run. A better system would be to require the last legal owner of a gun to be responsible for what is done with it. Since legal owners would then have to carry insurance to protect themselves, the insurance company would decide who the gun could be sold to. I think they would be rather thorough in their investigation of a prospective buyer. Of course the rate of gun sales would probably drop, but that would be good.
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Fishtail said it clearly and succinctly...
[Read the article: Iraq: American public opinion vs. a "small but powerful group"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush and Cheney are agents for Big Oil. That is the only explanation for their stubbornness and apparent stupidity. Iran, Russia, Mexico, and the Saudis have all reached "Peak Oil". Iraq has the only oil that was apparently up for grabs. Big Oil makes big money out of "owning" the oil in the ground, not by being a service industry to oil owning governments. Installation of a puppet government in Iraq, which Big Oil has a long history of doing everywhere else, would allow most of the profit from Iraq oil to flow to Big Oil. The law that is in the Iraqi parliament now does just that. Without that profit Big Oil would gradually lose its ability to dominate American politics. Right now no one can be elected president without campaign money from Big Oil. Democrats are just as controlled as Republicans. The destruction of the ability of Big Oil to control US politics is critical to our survival as a Democracy. To that extent the enemies of our enemies are our friends.
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McCain needs money
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]More precisely, he needs Big Oil money. I donated $100 to him when I thought he really was his own man. He got the message, however, the same as Hilary, no withdrawal from Iraq.
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Lack of training
[Read the article: Compassionate conservatism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's what we get by professionalizing the army and police. Almost no civilians have the faintest idea of what to do in an emergency. If a fair number of those students had military training and familiarity with firearms, they might have been able to do something. This is the generation of kids who were brought up to leave everything to "professionals". Wait for the paid "experts" to arrive.
As for those who denigrate the "armed citizen" by asking why any of them did not draw their piece, there were probably none there. Even with simple rules about getting a concealed firearms permit, very few people actually do it. I've never owned a gun in my life, because the necessity for using it would probably never come up. But being in a life or death situation with a gunman is one of those low probability events with catastrophic results. Maybe I should rethink my attitude and get a permit and a gun. Years ago around here a crazed gunman opened fire at a rest stop. Two brothers who were hunters got their rifles out of their pickup and shot him dead.
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Mandatory gun insurance
[Read the article: Why Democrats dumped gun control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Republicans should love the privatization of gun control, which would require anyone who owns a gun to have liability insurance. Anyone who sold a gun to person who did not present proof of insurance would be liable for the buyers actions. I'm sure that no insurance companies would have insured Cho Seung Hui after even the most cursory of investigations. Such insurance would be completely analogous to mandatory automobile insurance. No background check using the present guidelines would have prevented Cho Seung Hui from buying a gun. Such insurance would probably cost a few hundred dollars a year. I'm sure the gun manufacturers would hate such a requirement. This approach would get both the government and the gun sellers out of deciding who should own a gun, and put it into the hands of companies whose profit both depended on selling insurance and not selling it to people who would use the gun improperly.
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A modest suggestion-gun insurance
[Read the article: Why Democrats dumped gun control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, I made a modest suggestion that gun owners be required to carry liability insurance, and it was met with deafening silence. I thought it would make Republicans happy in that it would privatize gun control, and it would make Democrats happy because it would effectively prevent nut cases from owning guns. Profit driven insurance companies would be anxious to sell insurance, but averse to the risk of insuring criminals and nut cases. Since anyone selling a gun would be responsible for the use of the gun unless the buyer presented valid proof of insurance, no one would sell a gun to an uninsured person. Of course that would not prevent the sale by criminals to criminals, but no law can prevent that. What is wrong with such an approach? I guess politicians would no longer be able to use gun control to get votes from either side.
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Small arms and IED's
[Read the article: Repeal the Second Amendment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sure that others have said it, but the Iraqi insurgents (AKA patriotic freedom fighters) seem to be doing quite well with small arms and IED's against a very well armed and trained occupying force. We are not talking about pitched battles between lightly armed militiamen and heavily armed soldiers. We are talking about keeping the Federal, state, and local police forces scared of invading the wrong home. If you didn't notice the heavily armed SWAT teams at both Columbine and Virginia Tech were quite chicken hearted about going up against relatively lightly armed nut cases. That is why we need the 2nd Amendment.
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Procedural precaution?
[Read the article: Repeal the Second Amendment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, they did need an Abrams tank against some very lightly armed and poorly trained fools. There are not enough Abrams tanks to go against a well-armed (and not foolish) insurgent population. And if we went back to a citizen army we would have trained civilians against an army that would likely take sides with the insurgents. Bush and his patrons would love to see the 2nd amendment done away with (although they would never admit it) as part of their long range plan to eliminate the middle class, and create their empire.