I think the Court’s probably smart enough see through the bullet thing.

>>>”Second Amendment doesn’t say anything about ammunition, apparently.”

You just created the nightmare loophole that those folks were dreading someone would do. Either that or the Chris Rock $1000-a-bullet strategy.

The guns have to be unloaded. There will be guards at the doors to make sure no one sneaks in any bullets.

Second Amendment doesn’t say anything about ammunition, apparently.

Oy…”

Is there something wrong with recognizing that urban minorities are far more impacted by gun crime than white rural communities? It seems like looking at a problem realistically is the first way to address is. Ignoring real social issues because they touch on race (though more accurately socio-economics, but the two are tied together pretty closely in this country) seems like intentionally putting one’s eyes out because one doesn’t like the view.

…or maybe I misused ‘whom’ again. I do that sometimes. Sorry.

Yes, in a age where it was the only major centralized institution of power (see Chomsky on Adam Smith, or his essay or seminar in youtube “Government in the Future”). They weren’t against it only because someone stamped the word “government” on it, but for a series of reasons that are just as valid for “private” (meaning, unaccountable states that have greater set of factors that affect the public – like the case of emperors and pirates, the most powerful one allows only the smaller one to be called “pirate”, or “state”) tyrannies (the average joe receives more coercion from his micro-iteration of soft stalinism on matters of his job, rent etc in a week than he does from the gummint in a year – which is only there to make sure the bigger states are protected, like John Dewey said, “government is the shadow of big business projected across society”).

But it’s of no surprise that it is the only factor (or cage) of that complex equation to be allowed to be demonized by current clergy, since it’s the cage that proved itself to be most accountable and of most response (even if patheticaly miniscule) to vulnerable and labor sectors of the society.

“If your problem is with white, Christian gun owners shooting brown or black people (as seems to be the undertone of your post by citing xenophobia), I’d only point you to gun crime statistics that are pretty clear on who is shooting whom.”

Oy…

I have no personal problem with shooting people who threaten me (whether we use quotation marks or not) with lethal force. I also have no problem with some other citizen shooting someone who is threatening me with lethal force. If your problem is with white, Christian gun owners shooting brown or black people (as seems to be the undertone of your post by citing xenophobia), I’d only point you to gun crime statistics that are pretty clear on who is shooting whom.

I don’t know if there’s any strength in the argument that the 2nd Amendment exists to protect the people from the government (though from your spelling of the word government I assume you have some beef against the type of people who might make this argument). I’d like to think there is even if just the shell of the idea- America was founded on many principles, but surely one of them was a distrust of a far reaching and powerful central government, unchecked by the will of the electorate. If the second amendment does nothing else but remind us to be distrustful of power, then it is doing at least part of its job.

That said, if you have a problem with the 2nd Amendment, then get it repealed. Good luck with that. What I can’t stand are the people who would like the Supreme Court to repeal things for them through judicial interpretation.

They improve their damage rating against the undead, for one thing, because they count as Holy Weapons.
I also think they improve the To Hit rating.

Considering the shootings which draw the public attention seem to always be someone bringing guns to a location where no one else has guns, I guess I’m just not concerned about this event.

And not for nothing, DC has one of the most restrictive set of gun laws in the US. Vermont has next to no state laws. The mortality rate per 100,000 is 31.2 and 9.6, respectively. That’s a bit of cherry picking, but Vermont’s mortality rate is less than California, which is a state that encompasses a variety of communities and socio-economic groups. New York rivals D.C. for strictest laws, and its mortality rate is 5.1, comparable to Connecticut which is considerably more liberal in its gun laws and is a ‘shall issue’ state.

All of this is merely to say that gun laws, restrictive or permissive, have less effect on the mortality rates than culture and community. So when you say that Tennessee allows guns everywhere, it occurs to me that that isn’t saying anything about whether the state is more or less dangerous than any other. As mentioned above, DC doesn’t allow guns anywhere, yet I’m much more likely to be killed in the district than wandering around a Tennessee state park.

Some years back, my pastor had a “blessing of the toys” just after Christmas. I always thought it was a little odd. After this story, though, I imagined a “blessing of the guns”…farcical, at best.

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