champu

This is a good comparison. The teaching of history and religion is susceptible to both revisionism and selection bias. In my experience with history courses it usually came in the form of spending an inordinate amount of time on the particular teacher/professor's favorite topic. I'm frankly very skeptical about anyone doing a great job of presenting the history and core tenets of world religions on an even field. I do think that most social studies teachers can probably do an okay job. Everyone should just encourage their kids to read more and not to be afraid to ask questions. That leads me to a spin off question for people. There's a balance as to what grade level this material is appropriate for. Younger kids are more impressionable and older kids will hopefully have developed better critical thinking skills. Is junior high a good compromise?

But for which law having been overturned by which court on second amendment grounds do you feel America would not be one of, if not the most, violent societies in a first world country?

I admit I've largely become a broken record of myself in the "core topic" threads. Most of the people worth honing your opinions against have been here a while and, of course, those topics don't fundamentally change much. The threads about politicians are too troll-tastic for my liking and there are a lot of those lately it seems. I tried spinning off a meta-discussion about people posting here, but that didn't really go anywhere.

I was sitting on my couch watching a hockey game with (I'll admit) not the greatest posture when I sneezed and pulled a muscle in my lower back. I was worthless for the next two days.

Uh... I don't think you want to make a general argument that courts should not be able to tell legislatures to go pound dirt when they need to be told to go pound dirt. That said, what impass in the sequence of events surrounding gay marriage do you consider to be "this situation"? The reason I ask is because in many jurisdictions the existing laws governing recognized marriages were written with language that didn't preclude a gay couple being married. In some of those jurisdictions gay people just... went ahead and got married. I don't think that qualified as a "situation." A lot has happened since then, help me out.

The 10-year thing is probably just a California construct. It's something they're fiddling with again this year. (Note the linked bill isn't a complete list of misdemeanors that result in a 10 year revocation, just changes.)

In principle, I agree with you. In cases like the story here, it wouldn't be difficult to charge/convict him of a crime that would result in him being disqualified from owning firearms for 10 years if not for life. If this guy survives (I haven't looked into updates on his condition) I'm all for it as it doesn't run afoul of the 14th amendment. Unfortunately, officials in California (namely county sheriffs with whom such authority often lands) are demonstrably unfit to make subjective determinations about the ability to exercise firearms rights. Extending such subjective determination authority to ownership is something I'm adamantly against. As an aside, I've been reading a lot of court opinions and amicus briefs recently, and I think people in the media and casual Internet debaters on both sides of the argument take the "the second amendment enables the others" argument too literally. I don't think armed revolt is the picture people should get in their heads. The picture people should get in their heads is the crowd of Brady Campaign and other groups' supporters cheering on a circuit court that decided that the popular perception of safety was enough of a public interest to justify laws that restrict individual rights.

I was thinking about that earlier this year... http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4712391#4712391

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare Call them what you like, some people are unfitted to own lethal weapons. Fortunately Darwin seems to have dealt with this one before he hurt someone else. A rose by any other name would certainly smell as sweet, but if you simply call it a "plant" and instruct someone to bring you one, you're unlikely to get what you want.

From another article... Even disregarding that, and not knowing what gun it was, I can conclude he didn't set the safety properly because "not subsequently disregarding the four rules of firearms just because you engaged a safety feature" is the last and most important step of engaging any firearm safety feature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8

So now we add "stupid" to the list of descriptors we wish to conflate with "insane", "not normal", "sociopathic", and "mean/evil" by referring to all of the above as "loonies" or "nut jobs" Fantastic display of problem decomposition skills.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4747008;search_string=Detail;#4747008

Since the thread got bumped anyway, I figure I may as well post a follow up. I attended the gay wedding and I noticed no strange behavior from my wedding ring during the ceremony. I was completely unscathed. It is almost as if the wedding had no effect on my marriage whatsoever.

Just sell off all the existing items that say McKinley to future wannabe Antique Roadshow guests at exorbitant mark ups and use the money raised to pay for the rebranding.

Headline: "Study confirms that the US is No. 1 in mass shootings, blames 'gun culture'" Article Body: "A comprehensive analysis of the perpetrators, their motives and the national contexts for their actions suggests that several factors have conspired to create in the United States a potent medium for fostering large-scale murder." Also in the article it mentions the U.S. has had 31% of the 291 mass shootings worldwide between 1966 and 2012, or about 2 per year. Before you say anything, yes, I'm aware they weren't evenly distributed. I'm simply pointing out that this is the type of number you get when you count the events people would generally recognize as a mass shooting, and that are worth lumping together and talking about as single type of event.

Perhaps, but I feel like if anyone has it in them to overcome such adversities it's the guy who you've just decided needed his guns taken away because he was an abnormal asshole nut job. Now he doesn't even have the distraction of obsessively cleaning or accessorizing his guns, he can get right to it.

I've posted about California's AB 1014 in the past. They toned it down a bit before it passed such that the person doing the reporting has to be law enforcement or a family member. When it was introduced, anyone could file a report to have your guns confiscated, and getting caught lying in the report is only a misdemeanor. http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB1014. Since that passed, one assemblywoman has been trying to fix it a bit by giving the option to have a firearms dealer hang on to your guns for the duration (rather than police throwing them in a rusty evidence locker) http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB950 and by reclassifying the act of knowingly lying on a report as perjury and punishable as a felony. http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB225 None of it has anything specifically to do with mental health. The subject can be a nut job, "not functioning normally", or even just an asshole so it sidesteps quibbling over which equally inoperative label we should use. I think restricting it to family members means we won't see the social experiment of an Internet app and it will probably be used infrequently. However, since all it does is take guns and ignores the root of whatever the problem might be, I worry about how an individual will react. I don't think you can guarantee a tempest in a teacup just because they don't have guns. I think to an abnormally functioning asshole nut job you've just legitimized his or her persecution complex. Cue the manifestos and improvised weaponry.

God damn Minnesotans...

"Oh yeah? Let's see you defend an entity when it hypothetically does a thing I think it's capable of." As I said several pages ago, there are basically an infinite number of extremely offensive and imaginary activities that could be associated with a clinic that provides medical services to women. Consider my agreement and shared outrage to be equally imaginary as though I were hypothetically a reasonable person.

Here's the referenced source: http://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html Edited to add more detailed California specific source. See pg 15 et seq. http://www.oehha.ca.gov/ej/pdf/042313CalEnviroScreen1.pdf

Yipes! (from today) Terra: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/single.cgi?image=crefl1_143.A2015234184500-2015234185000.2km.jpg Aqua: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/single.cgi?image=crefl2_143.A2015234203000-2015234203500.2km.jpg

A joke isn't a joke if anyone whatsoever is genuinely offended by it.

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