h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"In Alaska, many of us need guns to fill our freezers, but if you need a 30-round clip you're a pretty poor hunter. If you are hoarding automatic (yes, they are legal) or semi-automatic weapons, you need Viagra."
(Shannyn Moore, Homer, Alaska)

Read more here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/my-guns-are-less-regulate_b_2368612.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Read and shared it, too - it is a discussion that needs to be kept alive (as I believe the author also mantions)

Here are two more gems:

"The Second Amendment was written by men who had fought alongside men who didn't survive their revolt against tyranny ... If you think it is your right or duty to overthrow the government at this point in time, you're going to need more than a few guns and monster clips. You'll need ... an army of your own to go up against our 3 million strong military"

"The same founders who thought a militia was a good idea would never have expanded gun ownership to blacks. The whole slavery situation could have gotten awkward quickly."

Speaking of the guns and slaves, I read somewhere that Benjamin Franklin found himself inheriting or being given a couple of slaves. Ben was not amused. I don't know how he disposed of the slaves, but one of his last acts was to sign a Quaker petition urging Congress to abolish slavery in 1791. Congress was worse than useless in response to the petition. Not only did they not abolish slavery, but they passed a measure outlawing discussion of the matter for decades to come.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is a descendant of slaves, supports the constitutional right to bear arms because guns were the only way many blacks could defend themselves against lynch mobs. I can see his point, but mad gunmen who are intent on killing schoolrooms full of children are defending themselves against lynch mobs, are they? Plus, aren't most such mass killers white?

That should have been "are *not* defending themselves against lynch mobs"

"...they passed a measure outlawing discussion of the matter..."

so much for freedom of speech

But Congress *is* the government. They didn't tell other Americans not to discuss the issue. All they did was order themselves not to. To reverse this, all the American people had to do was vote them all out and replace them with politicians who would be willing to debate slavery. This could have happened, but it didn't. Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin went to his grave knowing that he had at least tried. Three generations of abolitionists came along, all the time working hard to build momentum for abolishing slavery.

Once slavery was gone, the well-oiled social machinery was ready for the campaigns for female suffrage and temperance. Americans have been known to work long and hard against great odds to achieve what they want. Sometimes they do strange things to the democratic process. Just read "Last Call," which tells of the seventy year campaign to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. Some *very* strange things happened on the way to prohibition.

Over here it is legal to produce, sell and use tobacco. However you are not allowed to advertise for it

You may not consider this to be a grave violation of freedom of speech - but personally I fear we are heading towards the thin end of the wedge

Freedom of speech is very dear to me - others around me seem not to mind about it that much. Things were very different in the years following the German occupation from 1940-1945 - and during the McCarthy-years

Some say freedom of speech is a precondition for democracy. It is not. It is far more than that. It is an inviolable part of democracy. Freedom of speech is democracy - period

Keeping with the topic of guns, I'd like to say that freedom of singing is important, too. I've never heard Guns 'n' Roses, but they seem to do some singing.

Might this be a good moment to introduce the Stalin Organ?

I think I've met Katyusha before, but she's always fun if you don't get tooclose.