JoeWeber

You don't credit Ron with reconsidering his position based on new evidence?

You had a month and that's the best you could come up with for a joke? And you had to edit it, too?

I really don't think there is an intentional deception, rather it's just what reality is in the location the arguments come from. I've stated it here previously that I believe it has less to do with facts presented and more to do with local society. If someone has spent years naysaying those who believe any gun control is sensible at their favorite gun range or in the company of their duck hunting or hog shooting buddies there is a likely zero chance that anything discussed on an internet blog will inspire an epiphany. In a war of wits between me here and Junior there the outcome is in no doubt.

Well tonights hearings are over. For many the relief must be palpable: no more hearings to not watch until September.

Baloney. No one is pretending that, you are simply unable to release your grip on the canard. No, it does not need to include "rifles and handguns". You're just trotting out the old red meat nonsense. We can star with assault rifles and high capacity magazines. Neither are needed for hunting or self defense and both would be easy to describe in legislation. Start calling them by their real names and quit being obtuse. You know full well what we're talking about when we are stating AR-15's and assault style weapons.

Is that your trouble, the money? Sure, let's give a tax credit for every banned gun or magazine turned in by a date certain and pay for it with a tax increase on the gun manufacturers who profited heavily from this national disaster. Of course let's also have some serious possession penalties for our troubles. Perhaps a few Texas style turn in your neighbor for a bounty laws would help, too. Bill, continuing to argue that criminals don't obey laws as an excuse for doing nothing is hardly an intelligent point. We need to start somewhere by restricting something and it is hardly smart to argue that the something shouldn't include assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Another good start is to stop glorifying the ownership of assault weapons and high capacity magazines and, for those of us with some additional capacity, to stop referring to AR Platforms and high cap mags in those euphemistically cutesy terms as if announcing we're leaving the room to go #2.

Me too. We're lucky here.

Spot on, Jerry. The Gunhugging transammosexuals will never see a path forward that does not include more guns, and more dangerous guns, for all. Earlier in the thread Bill wrote: "Banning high cap mags may have no impact." So much to unpack there, none of which will ever resonate with BillE, I'm now convinced. There's the "high cap mags" for starters. All just local gun guy talk he'd say, I'm sure, not realizing that it's a neutralizing (I'd argue neuralizing) bit of brainwashing he's been subjected to. In fact, they are High Capacity Magazines for guns used to mass murder people in the current discussion. Then there is the "may have no impact" toss out for the purpose of misdirection. Of course the banning of high capacity magazines won't eliminate their use tomorrow but it's a real and fair start. Too bad the indoctrinated never give an inch gun crowd believes they can never give an inch. Gun Loving is a religion and you cannot argue people out of a religion.

No, there's just nothing that can be done. It's too late, there are already too many guns, too many AR-15's. So, the only thing to do is arm good guys with even better weapons. Thank God for Sig Sauer the winner of the US Army's next generation assault weapon contest. And to celebrate they have already released thousands of the civilian version the MCX-SPEAR at $8K a pop. Now how much good clean fun is this baby doll? I'll let Gen. Mark Milley do the talking: “This is a weapon that could defeat any body armor, any planned body armor that we know of in the future,” then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the Army Times in 2019. “This is a weapon that can go out at ranges that are unknown today.” Dayum, sport fans, with this baby ain't no hogs nowhere gonna be safe. Hoo-rah!

For sure. Real feral hogs can be huge, dangerous bastards. But it can never be considered such a problem that private citizens killing them with machine guns from helicopters is either a legitimate sport or necessary solution.

Maybe quit releasing idiots into the environment would help: "Cedar Knoll Hunting Lodge is located near the Savannah River in South Carolina. This area is one of the few places in the country that actually features wild hogs at home in their natural habitat. Unlike some hunting circles that release domesticated hogs into the wild, Cedar Knoll is all natural." Possibly just not letting loose your pigs so you can hunt them down and kill them could be a part of the solution, too.

Sure, give them the same rights as the alligators living in Florida Golf Courses and put your moonshine still somewhere else.

I'm well aware, but it's not Jurassic Park: it's wild pigs. The idea that a bunch of private army wannabee military gumbo's need to use "belt fed weapons" fired from "rotary platforms" to "eradicate" a problem that can not be eradicated by the method is just plain dumb. Only in America can such idiotic nonsense be offered up as a common sense solution and justification for our stupid interpretation of what should have been an innocent, and useful, constitutional amendment.

An unregulated hog eradication program, being necessary to the security of a pig free America, the right of the people to use yet to be invented machine guns fired from yet to be invented helicopters to make sausage meat out of the bastards shall, when the right time comes, be read into the US Constitution.

Got me, I was kicked out of third grade for not shaving. You're the house genius, you tell us.

Yes, I do. But I still think your approach was ham handed. That said, no matter what I think I believe what you wrote is a needed aspect of this entire, ridiculous feature of American life and if my taking a swat from a Canadian helps, I'll take it.

Put it back in your pants, Ken. I have been open about the guns I own and I have been getting rid of the ones I don't use or need. I own, and have ever owned, zero semi-automatic rifles of any model or any caliber in my life. So maybe you should just back down a bit.

What beyond studies by experts qualify as substantiation for you? The government does provide border control but does not supply viagra to those admitted. No matter, just what the holy hell does border control control have to do with your Jurassic Hog problem? You'd have been remiss not to trot out this time honored conservative trope. You could argue, and it wouldn't surprise me one iota if you haven't or don't regularly, that if we only observed the constitution more closely and armed every American until they fell down from the weight that it would be cheaper than our expensive government run military. Same with our fire departments etc. etc. etc. The problem is too many guns and too many of the wrong kind of guns and too many gun lovers whose identities are intertwined with those guns. I'm looking at you, Bill.

Yes, I would happily deny ownership of those completely unnecessary AR-15's to everyone if that would stop another mass shooting using an AR-15. As for the shooters mindset, I have no special knowledge. Here is but one article by a group that studies the mindset of mass shooters: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-04/el-paso-dayton-gilroy-mass-shooters-data You can find all you want with simple searches. No, I haven't tried Hog eradication from a rotary platform, assuming you mean a helicopter, (fewer words and letters and immediately understandable to everyone, FYI). And for damn certain if they do need machine guns to protect themselves from pigs then that should be a job for government agencies and professional government hunters: hence no need for citizen ownership of the weapons and if that service costs us all money better than that the weapons in private hands. And what I read that makes me grumpy is the nonsense justifications for continuing the insanity by so called conservatives. Thanks for asking.

Damn Bill, stop with the "scary looking guns" trope. It only serves to show a level of ignorance regarding why they are more problematic than non-military appearing semi-automatic weapons: for the mentally harmed souls who use them to kill they confer a sense of belonging because they are emblematic of the resist all change gun culture in America. For the weak of mind they are an in your face snub to society; they're also a palliative for a damaged masculinity and, horribly, for some they are a rite of passage to a moment of fame. We don't need them. You don't need them. Brent doesn't need them and, for goddamn certain they don't need them in South Dakota to shoot prairie dogs as stated by that moron Sen. John Thune.

Ahh, notes from the Heartland. Thanks.

The time to plan a bolt hole was years ago; panicked fleeing isn't my style. I have a good thing in Oregon and have great staff everywhere; we expect it to continue on. At 68 I am past the age of fertility, and probably fertilizing, so I have that going for me. All of my frustrations are for others who are affected, not us personally. All of my family are here in Oregon and I doubt the important freedoms will change here. But those things aren't on my mind. On my mind is how wether we want to or not. or like it or not, we are aligning ourselves separately, not unlike Ron and his cohorts, into like thinking groups. That's the anthesis of a homogenous society and from what I see that's where we are headed. That's a bummer.

Yes we have. We are living in a changed world now. Nonsense hopes that we can reverse these things and the changes are short term are wrong headed. The purveyors of autocracy and theocracy are in control. People of all ages should plan accordingly.

Don't let's forget the Arvata, CO armed hero who stopped a killer was quickly there after killed by the heroic police as a reward. It's just unbelievable how the johnny gotta have a gun crowd would scream Hooray! over another mass shooting no matter how it ended. Of course, it was yet another AR-15 for the murder weapon. And, the hero fired 10 rounds from his Glock. I'm sorry, but I see no cause for celebration in this latest expression of our ongoing national tragedy.

Relying on subject matter “experts “, or internet influencers for that matter, instead of a trained and well paid professional teaching cadre is a very slippery slope in my view. That said I’m certain I could do much to advance the current societal decline if I was given just a few first grade classes.