reasonablenut

The thread I'm referring to is almost worn to the bone.

My fellow sophist references this crap NYT's op-ed. A fisk follows:

Americans stunned at recent sprees of gun mayhem in churches, schools and
courthouses should know that Congress is gearing up for action on this issue.
No, lawmakers are not rushing through legislation to cut down on the 29,000 gun
deaths a year. Rather, the Senate is preparing to revive a craven proposal to
shield irresponsible gun manufacturers and dealers from accountability.

Americans should also know that it is illegal to carry guns in churches, schools, and courthouses in the states where these atrocities happened. Does anyone detect a trend here? If no one but an 80 year old grandmother is armed, one who which can't even safeguard her firearm, no one is safe in those places.

The proposal, which failed narrowly last year, is now estimated to have majority
support from lawmakers who have been either cowed or bolstered by the gun lobby.
It would have stopped such lawsuits as the one that led to a $2.5 million
settlement for the families of victims in the Washington sniper shootings. That
rifle was traced to a West Coast dealer who claimed that it was one of 238
weapons suddenly missing from inventory. The Senate proposal would shelter such
transparently harmful dealers and manufacturers and snuff out more than a dozen
other suits now in the courts.

No, no, no. I reference you to Alphecca's analysis of the law.

What people never understood about the DC sniper settlement is that the gun shop was negligent, but Bushmaster settled for 1.5 mil, or something. They didn't do it because they had to, their insurance company told them this is what we're going to do. Throughout that story, I never even saw circumspect evidence that the manufacturer (Bushmaster) had been negligent in any way. They were selling rifles to a store that was approved by STATE AND FEDERAL agencies. Why didn't they get their pound of flesh from the gummint?

The bill, offered this year by Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican,
goes further, undermining not just lawsuits but also administrative proceedings
to revoke abusive dealers' licenses. Under it, gun dealers couldn't be
disciplined for black-market deals involving illegal weapons unless it could be
proved that they had engaged in them knowingly - as if general ineptitude or a
lack of interest were acceptable. Last year, Congress joined President Bush in
letting lapse the 1994 law restricting the availability of battlefield assault
rifles. Congress also mandated the destruction of gun-sale records within 24
hours.

I myself have engage in numerous private sales. The gummint has no authority over those. I really can't see a retailer being so inscrupulous that the would take the $150.00 profit off of an AR at the risk of their license. What follows is two setences that are completely unrelated to the point the editorial writer is trying to make. I'm not sure what the hell "battlefield assault rifles" are and I certainly know that every libertarian in the lower 48 hate Ashcroft despite his 24 hour record destruction regulation.

I saved the final sentence for last:

Lawmakers were only making things easier for potential terrorists and other
sociopaths.

Now, if I'm not mistaken, 9/11 was carried out with box-cutters in its inital phases. After that it was putting fear into people and utilizing methods of transit to crash towers. I haven't heard of a terrorist using an AK-clone in any recent attacks, except for the ones carried out by the PA who are supplied by the French.

Secondly, the references this editor opens his thoughts with are all "gun-free" zones. So if a sociopath can get a gun into the safe zones, how are we going to prevent him from other weapons of directed destruction?

And, of course, according to this dickhead, I'm probably a sociopath as well. Just lump me in with Bin Laden. There's the NYT's editorial stance. "We took our eye off Bin Laden", wait, No, "We also took our eye off of Ben."