JoeWeber

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.

Hooray indeed! Now we just need more mall shootings to further prove out the theory.

The woman who claimed to be the girls mother, didn't give her name, and who was found at the accused rapists home, simply states that everything they say about the accused is a lie. Nothing fishy there. Oh, and the accused admitted to having sexual relations with the then 9 year old twice. What say we hold off on any opinion based on that report.

Just terrible and these stories are starting to pop up more and more. It's the dark ages again for women and girls in America.

Absolutely. The problem for taxpayers is that it disproportionally benefits the young, and too often, people of color.

They're so heat stroke confused and undereducated they voted for both Biden and Sinema. Great place to live if you don't mind being baffled, desiccated and racing into the mall before your shoe soles melt.

Maybe you're right. I just scanned this and higher rural rates do seem the norm since 1996. I'll need to look at it a lot closer, and look elsewhere for a connection, but the possibility seems real. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4551430/#:~:text=Suicide risk increases with age,aged 20 to 24 years.&text=Rates of suicide also vary,rural compared with urban areas.

Arizona Education Associations's Mission: Keeping the Promise of Quality Public Education I just don't see it being explained away by teacher shortages. More likely is a paycheck shortage. But going even further, what the holy hell are people doing still moving to Arizona? It's the 3rd fastest growing state and except for water from the Colorado (nearly gone) everyone there would be screwed. Mind bogglingly, with over 300 for realsy sunny days a year their power comes from coal, gas and nuclear. Crazy.

Right, I hear that Larry Hill will take up a teaching post in Eloy. "Alright, kids, so today we're going to do some hands on Otter flying. We don't need no 300 hour Chandler Flight School kids and waste $125 bucks a day on them to be our jumpers Otter pilots anymore!"

"Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law another education measure decreeing that public school teachers are no longer required to have a college degree of any kind before being hired. Arizona teachers will only have to be enrolled in college in order to begin teaching the state's public school students." Education? We don't need no stinkin' education.

It's time to can senior Secret Service leadership. Doing hookers in Columbia is one thing, erasing text messages from our first Presidential coup attempt is something different. There can be no certainty that their loyalties lie with America and not Donald Trump. The Director and his subordinates need to be gone now and every agent assigned to Trump needs to be reassigned.

d'accord.

The Secret Service agents? She testified that Trump wanted the "mags" removed so armed thugs could enter the Ellipse. On a final note, I will never reply again to you on a serious matter when you play the game of using a multi-quote.

Maybe, but let's be honest about pubescent kids. We were all one once and the confusions are both many and mentally disabling on good days. No one sane wants to deprive or deny parents the ability to make hard post birth decisions when medically necessary. But I'm wagering, without evidence, that rural kids who aren't hypnotized by social media, to the same degree as urban kids, are less likely to be overwhelmed by the need to change their gender in middle school. I absolutely believe that any kid who sincerely wants to present as another gender should be allowed the expression and supported. But I do not believe that surgical change should happen before the age of majority.

Where? At the age of majority. Until we have a vastly better understanding, the type that is a close cousin of certainty, better to err on the side of caution. Of course a law might be passed allowing kids at any age or parents of any level of credulity to surgically alter themselves, their kids or each other. Until then 18 seems a good number and not too long to wait.

For sure. But while we're arguing that, let's just charge the bastard with manslaughter. Surely after Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony that charge can be legitimately made.