12/11/15

Today in gun reform: tax the hell out of them

On Weekend Edition Saturday Scott Simon lumped the Westerhuis murders in with acts of domestic terrorism.
The names of towns — Colorado Springs last week, San Bernardino this week, Roseburg, Oregon in October, Platte, South Dakota in September, Lafayette, Louisiana in July, Omaha, in January — and of victims, heroes, and assailants sometimes seem to run together. [After Mass Shootings, People Turn To Prayer — And Prayer Shaming]
A gun is like a lawyer: you carry one around long enough and sooner or later you're going to use it.

From the Casper Trib online:
The Wyoming Department of Revenue has suspended sales tax collections from gun shows because of increasing animosity toward the state's field tax agents. Dan Noble, director of the department's excise tax division, said Friday that an incident at a gun show triggered the decision. He added, however, that resistance from gun show sponsors and participants has been a recurring problem statewide. "I have 10 field reps throughout the state, and every one of them has experienced some animosity," he said. "Folks are nervous anyway because there are guns there. I don't want to put my people at risk."
Red states are not going to fix their own problems.

Only We the People can slow these people down. Local law enforcement is only as effective as a legislature wants it to be.

Is this how Americans really want to live? Carry rifles and sidearms into every bar, church, and arena?
Milch has pointed out repeatedly in interviews that the intent of the show was to study the way that civilization comes together from chaos by organizing itself around symbols (in Deadwood the main symbol is gold). If history is written by the victors, Deadwood is all about giving the losers their due. In the first season, magnificent bastard Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) came off as a villain; this year, his inevitably doomed campaign to save the lawless town from annexation by the United States and exploitation by robber barons served as a brilliant allegory for the evolution of American capitalism.
Gun carrying people are saying they are being responsible (but won't be held liable) for our safety if the rest of us don’t, or refuse to, carry.

Thomas Jefferson believed a standing army and the right to bear arms are mutually exclusive.

Stand your ground has become vigilante justice because the courts are overwhelmed with suspects in the war on drugs, our communities are becoming armed camps and we’re barricaded in our homes afraid to let our kids go to school.

How many more people will be caught in or die from as yet uncounted crossfires?

Maybe this would be a great time for a piece of rhubarb pie.

Wyoming is most heavily armed state, South Dakota is number 22.

Prohibition doesn't work: levy transaction taxes on the sales and gifting of shotguns, rifles, handguns and extended clips then tag the revenue for Medicaid expansion.


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