The NRA doesn't give a damn about safety. Their only goal is profits even if it means giving AK-47s to Al Quaida which I'm pretty sure they've done indirectly. Defending this nation does not mean arming everyone so that this country can turn into an "OK Corral" until everyone is dead. If the NRA really cared about safety and defense, they might want to try pushing for single payer healthcare so that those of us who suffer from plenty of misfirings don't get ripped off by our insurance companies but that government will finally pay attention to safety, sanity, and well-being when the pols suffer the consequences of promoting recklessness and gun toting madness.

The second amendment has nothing to do with gun control. The Second Amendment is about a WELL REGULATED MILITIA, not a bunch of dysfunctional gun toters ready to turn this country into an OK Corral as if it's not already happening. The amendment does not support outright banning but it says nothing about controlling the flow. Let's also not forget that back when this amendment was written, the guns them took time to load and were used by mainly sensible people unlike today's rapid fire and loading versions used by deranged lunatics.

Let's read this part of the 2nd amendment again, shall we:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Since the NRA has no intentions of having a WELL REGULATED MILITIA but instead profiteering, they could care less about the 2nd Amendment except to misinterpret it for their own purposes of desperately maximizing their bottomline.

"Inalienable Rights" is not in the Constitution. It is in the Declaration of Independence, which holds NO weight as Law.

The rights of every individual END when they infringe upon the rights of others.

Having the "right" to own a gun with the premeditated thought of "protecting" ones self by shooting "someone" whom you deem a threat, means that if you actually kill someone with it, you have committed MURDER, even if you unintentionally shoot a family member who is crawling through an open window because they lost their key.

Your "legal to not legal" flow of guns is a myth. There is already handgun registry, there are already extensive background checks. Honest, law abiding citizens do not break the law. Anybody who could supply legally purchased arms to felons is instantly trackable. Anyone who has a good name isn't going to blow it for a $50 profit.

Some people are evil, and no laws will stop that. You're trying to shout, "Make crime illegal! Ban murder!", and due to your your frustration with crime and bent minds, you're inhibiting the good from protecting themselves and their loved ones. You're crying to decrease the risk of committing crimes, which in turn increases crime. The cities that have the strictest gun control, and most prohibitive bans in place, also have the highest concentrations of violent crimes. Gun control has never, ever resulted in crime control, that much is clear after decades of various legislations in many regions.

FYI, a 1989 ruling says that the police have no obligation or duty to protect citizens. That means the first and perhaps only line of defense against crime is ourselves.

That's the crux of it ... misinterpreting the Second amendment.

The historical reason for the Second Amendment has _absolutely_nothing_ to do with gun ownership. The reason the Second Amendment came about was because we had just come out of a war with the British, and four states insisted upon assurance that they had the right to form their own militia to protect themselves against what they perceived could become an overly powerful Federal Army before they would ratify the document. It is about The People, collectively, bearing arms to protect their community, and has NOTHING to do with individual ownership of weapons. (it doesn't say "each person" anywhere in there) Note that it says nothing about where those arms are to be stored. It only affirms the right of The People to bear arms as part of a militia.

Until the last time that the Second Amendment came before the Supreme Court, all of the rulings dealt strictly with the question of militia. Historically, there are no rulings on gun ownership or individual "rights" until recently.

That's probably a major reason why Bush wanted the people he put on the court ... because they side with the warped NRA viewpoint.

My uncle was a Marine during WW II, and knew the power of guns. He was also a member of the NRA, and he told me that he had no problem having his guns registered with the local police, because if they were stolen it would make them easier to recover. But then, he wasn't a gun FANATIC like a lot of these NRA nutcases.

Every such piece has almost always ended up being traced back to the NRA pushing for it. The NRA has plenty of cash to control the media and bribe Congress.

Absolutely, regulated "Free Speech Zones" aren't violations of the First Amendment, they're cherished, "elements of liberty"!

"Improvised border check point detentions" are just there to guarantee that the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure isn't so blandly uniform across the nation.

Keeping law abiding citizens from defending themselves against the 0.5% of a population that occupies neighborhoods with criminality and fear is just good, old-time cultural diversity.

If we don't keep all our rights everywhere, they will be nit picked until we have them nowhere.

Sioux Rose

INANNA: I was thinking about this while biking the other night. How rare it is for a man to have a true partnership with a woman. I am fighting with my local beau these days because his "mars rules" are unbearable to me. Most men PRESUME the female will go along with whatever they want to do. Most men assume they get the wheel in the car, too. Most men decide where the couple is going, and you know that all those fundamentalist churches attract men who want their wives to OBEY them, and women who are willing to make the trade presuming "the lord" will keep their husband faithful.

The academic disciplines have emerged from extreme patriarchal viewpoints so even when there are women accredited in their respective fields, those women who rise to any seat of power tend to reflect the views of the establishment that "produced" them. I have often spoken of this "Athena" model and powerful women like Hillary, Thatcher or Condi Rice. (Based on mythology, Athena denies having been born from a mother and instead asserts that she emerged from her father Zeus' head. This then is the woman close to power because she THINKS like a man.)

Few nations have equal representation by gender, and our Supreme Court is pathetic. I remember when I lived in Gainesville with a church on every block and an ersatz worship of its college football team. The women dressed in orange and blue (the colors of the team) would walk behind "their men." And I thought this is the price they pay for being part of a traditional family structure.

There definitely is a lot of backlash going on and I see a very strong part of it coming from pornography. It's hard enough to have genuine intimacy with a partner, but when so many men are using porn to "get off" (as Robert Jensen's book title puts it), and this porn is ESPECIALLY degrading to women, the imprint of very demeaning imagery remains inside the minds of too many males. My daughter dated a West Point Cadet who roomed with several others when he graduated and she said they watched a lot of porn. Notice the sexual element to a lot of the torture tactics the U.S. officials don't want made known. Frankly, in the gang bang films I see latent homosexuality where the woman is just the prop and it's really about male bonding. The fear of homosexuality turns the female into a kind of token "gateway" that all the men USE and ABUSE to create a bond among the men. The woman is the cast off object. I believe that torture does something similar among those who take on the sadistic role. The participating males (and those few females who wear uniforms to prove that they, too, "have come a long way, baby" and can "appreciate" torture, too) share in a rite that bonds them over the degradation of another human being.

I asked myself what would make for a healthy male in a society that pushes such violent imagery at men? A society that tells a man in so many Hollywood films (this was not true when Gregory Peck or Jimmy Stewart argued for decency and made moral fiber the basis for the male hero) that he has to be brutal, or wield a weapon, or wear a uniform, or be tough on crime, or prove himself in some athletic ring. All of those spectacles indeed answer to and inflate Mars in our society (and collective unconscience). The astro-logos holds OTHER models for both the Divine masculine and Divine feminine. The insistence on the Mars model is quite literally killing our world and everything in it. Frankly, I think love is made quite rare, as well. A view from the heavens is before us. Its 12-fold model reflects a celestial basis for equality that is NOT based on one size fits all. Goddess knows such a model is needed, and might save U.S. from ourselves!

"
And are the same ones in gyms who slam the weights and bellow like asses when they lift."

I am not attacking you, but as a weightlifter and an athlete, I am going to nitpick this point.

Ever watched women's tennis? If you did, you would notice that many of the top female players scream, bellow, VERY loudly when they hit the ball. Case in point, Maria Sharapova. To the point that idiotic sexist male spectators complain that this screaming, this bellowing, by women players is not "womanly", not "feminine".

Or, from a (Japanese) martial arts standpoint, this is sometimes called a "kiai" shout. A short yell before a technique is executed.

For quite a few people, screaming, bellowing, shouting, grunting, when they are exerting maximum physical effort helps them perform better. The effect is both physiological and mental.

From a mental standpoint, the screaming / bellowing helps to block out the fear: fear of failure, fear of injury, when you have throwing many hundreds of pounds around, there is going to be such fear;and pain, and helps focusing in the immediate present, to focus and channel the maximum physical force that is being generated, to provide a focus for the gathering of energy, in a single directed explosion of inner will.

From a physiological standpoint, athletes hold their breaths when exerting maximum force, to keep the mid torso, the abdomen, the chest cavity, rigid, which allows better transfer of forces from the powerful lower body muscles to other parts of the body. Once past that point of maximum exertion, they forcefully exhale.

A forceful exhalation which often comes with vocal expression. The shout, the screaming, the bellowing, is an audible indication of proper breathing patterns, and focused application of physical force and inner will.

Screaming / bellowing happens in many sports. By men AND women. For very good reasons.

As for slamming the weights, when you have just lifted a huge amounts of weights, at your maximum ability, letting them down extremely gently is not only not easy, it can sometimes lead to injury, as you are in an extremely fatigued state.

I am not saying there aren't people who behave like asses in the gym. I am saying that the screaming and the slamming of weights is often necessary. It is a gym. Not a library. People are there to lift weights, not read books.