Shouting “fire” is perfectly acceptable if there is a fire. Or indeed if the OWNER of the theatre allows it in one of the plays.

Civil liberties are PROPERTY RIGHTS – or did you not know that?

As for “nuclear weapons” – on a private base on Mars (or whatever) of course. But where an explosion will damage other people’s property.

But why are we talking about “nuclear weapons”.

I said firearms – Barack Obama’s armed guards.

Ordinary people will disarm when Comrade Barack’s guards do.

We both know that yet more “gun control” measures will not reduce murders (if anything they increase them).

This is a collectivist power grab.

And nothing more.

You are one side – or you are on the other.

And Angus that is an “absolute”.

Well I have given up hope for New Hampshire (although the Free State people may prove me wrong in 2014 – they have only lost five Governorship elections in a row, the sixth time may be different….), but I would like to see ALL the States that voted against Comrade Barack act to assert their independence.

After all all the States that voted against Comrade Barack could leave – they have common borders.

And if some State that voted for Comrade Barack (New Hampshire, Virginia…..) want to leave the Union also.

Good – so they should.

Yes, Texas, S. Carolina…I’d love to see S. Dakota join the throng. The Southern states too, of course.

Chicago. If it were just the dead people it wouldn’t be so bad, but don’t forget their dogs also vote, along with Unidentified Flying (and other) Aliens….

. . .

other rob,

This idea of a national database of the “mentally ill” is absolutely horrible. And of course it flows out of obamacare (the Health Fraud Act) as well as being a dips*** idea of the NRA and probably uncountable others.

It’s one of the reasons you have to be very, very careful about laws involving the “mentally ill” or “mentally unstable” or whatever is the “mentally” excuse of the day–the guaranteed certainty of deliberate misuse of the law, I mean.

There are enough horror stories about people wrongly committed to psychiatric facilities who are then nearly unspringable to give any sensible person the willies.

And what, people never heard of the goings-on in the USSR involving people who were “committed” because some political attitude, or lack of proper veneration of some Power That Was, was clear evidence of mental illness? “It can’t happen here”? Tell it to the Easter Bunny.

Talk like this is absolutely frightening.

Also, what you said about the “School Shield Program” (another thing we’re internalizing: For everything, there must be a “program” to handle it) and the TSA.

. . .

Jaded,

“The only reason….” I think there’s more to it than that. I think too many people have internalized the idea in general of “it takes a professional.” And also, of “an Authority must set the rules…judge…and decide outcomes.”

A good summary would be “If the only way that Mr. Pierre can think of to defend gun rights is expanding bureaucracy and putting the country further into unsustainable debt, then we need to fire him and hire somebody who is less useless.”

I think that the NRA may have jumped the shark.

Oh dear…..

Mr LaPierre called for a national database of the mentally ill…

What could possibly go wrong?

Yes – the press conference was an epic fail. Stupid talk about violent video games and television shows – and the the “bring in the Feds” stuff you mention.

They did not even check to make sure there were not protestors in the hall.

The media in Britain have been gloating over that.

Sky television just as much as the BBC.

It should be remembered that both the government television and radio, and the private ones, are scumbags.

Dads for the most part would not. You also wouldn’t have to pay the dads, and they would not require a new government department because they would be volunteers.

The only reason the NRA are proposing a professional rather than a voluntary force of school guardians is because they have at some level internalised the lie that the average untrained citizen with a gun is an unacceptable risk around school children. I for one would gladly trust the average father to watch over both mine and his own children providing he had no criminal record and was broadly respectable.

Volunteer “soldiers” fighting for their families always fight harder than mercenaries fighting for pay.

In particular this (source – WSJ):

Mr. LaPierre said that we should be able to afford to put a police officer in every school. He calls on Congress today “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school in this nation.”

Further, the “School Shield Program” proposed appears to have the potential to become a bloated, bureaucratic nightmare.

I fear that this could be the TSA all over again and that the NRA has made a tactical decision to pander to the statists – “Leave the guns alone and we’ll give you another bureaucratic empire – it’s what you really want anyway.”