As a matter of fact, if a gun is "meant" for killing people, considering that there are approximately 200 million guns in the US and 11,000 gun deaths per year in the US, then even if you consider every single one of those deaths to have been caused by a different firearm (which isn't true, but that's a "worse case scenario"), then every year 99.9945% of those guns are used for something other than what they're "meant" for since they didn't kill anyone.

Frequency of use for designed purpose does not change the designed purpose.

Guns are made for killing things. The fact that many/most guns are not used for killing things does not change that guns are made for killing things, any more than the fact that most air bags just sit in a steering wheel changes the fact that airbags are designed to prevent injury or death in car accidents.

It's not illegal to manufacture or sell something that is eventually used in a crime.

It *IS* illegal to provide material support for a criminal act. That makes you one of the criminals.

So, if I make guns that are sold at retail and a criminal comes and buys them at a store and then uses them in a crime, not my fault. But if I sell a few crates of guns to a visitting African warlord for cash, well....

If I have a business installing hidden compartments in cars, no problem. If I find out one of my customers is using the compartments to smuggle materials and I continue to serve that customer, I'm no longer just installing hidden compartments, I'm PARTICIPATING IN THE SMUGGLING.

The guy wasn't jailed for making the compartments. He was jailed for being part of the smuggling scheme.

Practicing to kill an animal for food... what's wrong with using paintballs?

Practicing hunting with paintballs is like practicing basketball with baseballs.

Paintballs are an OK approximation of close-quarters firearms use, but are a horrible approximation at any sort of distance.

If you want to practice hunting, using real bullets on targets would be more effective.

I got a kick out of the rule that you can have one golf club, or two clubs, but the golf clubs is right out.

Cause, you know, more than one club per hand is just too dangerous.

Just FYI, as you get older, it gets harder and harder to see things that are close to your eyes, leading you to hold things you want to read further and further away from your face, not closer.

An iPad is a poor PC replacement for most old folks. They don't need to be doing tasks like email on a small screen with a touch "keyboard".

At what point do you realize that if you're going to use it as a PC, you should just buy a PC?

The article might as well be me... except it's 270 miles, and my dad does provide some front-line tech support. But my mom is still on AOL.

This Christmas we had her try various tech devices from smart phones to tablets (Android and iOS); the end verdict was she is still most comfortable in front of a monitor with a keyboard and mouse. Tablets worked OK for some of the things she wanted to do, but the lack of physical keyboard was problematic, esp. when it came to email. And it's also more comfortable for her to be sitting in a chair NOT having to hold the screen. Tablet screens also suffer compared to larger monitors when you're old and want a large font.

So while mom might end up with a tablet as an accessory, they are NOT desktop replacements. And don't solve the AOL problem either.

To the article submitter, what does your mom use AOL for? The AOL experience isn't necessarily much different than the browser experience, for certain activities, so you might want to try setting up Windows 7 and then seeing if the browser is "close enough".

Ultimately I got my mom a new PC (her old one was OLD and took days to boot (ok, 20 minutes)) and put windows XP on it. Fortunately she doesn't feel the need to download the screensaver du jour, so with virus software XP is OK and what she's familiar with. Did end up having to put AOL back on it but dad is working on weaning her over to a browser. If she makes that transition probably on to Windows 7.

Two people can't use the same IP address at the same time either - your packets are interleaved.

It just so happens that your packets are interleaved on the microsecond scale while gun use is interleaved on the order of hours/days/weeks.

If you are shipping items from country to country, in addition to the time it takes the postal systems to move your package, there is also the time it spends in customs. Lots of packages sail right through, but some get "stuck", and when they get through customs is up to customs.

So your package could have spent weeks in customs somewhere.

...don't let people have access to the hashed passwords for your system.

From the user's perspective, it's don't use the same password in more than one place, so that if one place does let its hashed passwords loose, it can't be used against you.

...I got this bug on a website I do *NOT* use Facebook to log into, so the Facebook statement appears incorrect in that regard. (I was logged into Facebook in that browser though.)

The policies did originate in the legislative process.

The issue is that some people are claiming the legislation says something different than other people claim it says.

And that's a very common occurrence in our government - the executive always attempting to take the broadest interpretation of executive power as possible.

It's a big reason we have that whole judicial branch.

The answer is, it depends. My current answer is wait for other elected US officials to act. That's worked pretty well for hundreds of years. Somebody acts outside the bounds of the law, they eventually get removed from office, possibly put in jail, etc.

The nice thing about democracy is it's a structure that resists consolidation of power. If one person starts getting too much power, other people will use democratic mechanisms to reduce that power. It's not like the Republicans would allow George Bush to become a dictator, or the Democrats would allow Obama to become one, because then no one else gets their turn in 4 or 8 years. And consolidation of power means a Senator who used to be able to leverage his vote for consideration of his pet projects (or donors or whatever) doesn't want to find himself where he's only leveraging his vote to not get arrested. And all those corporations who finance political campaigns don't want to be in a position where a dictator can come seize their assets either.

And even the President himself doesn't have a whole lot of incentive to become a dictator - he's going to be rich whether he stays in power or not, so best not to get in a position where the only option people have of getting rid of you is killing you.

The idea that any single entity is going to consolidate power across 50 states, each with their own military and police apparatus, and with the cooperation of the members of our volunteer military, is just plain ridiculous.

What we're talking about here is a very sensational, but very minor, topic. More American citizens live or die on changes in DUI laws than the drone use policies. George Ryan (former Illinois Governor) killed more American citizens as a result of taking a single bribe than Obama has killed with drones.

Like all issues with what should, and should not, be legal actions by the government, this one will get settled through legislative or judicial process. We're not talking about the arrest, jailing, or killing of political opponents. These are people who have specifically declared a desire to destroy the political process entirely.

There are no US citizens captive in Cuba. We did put one in the brig in South Carolina for a while, which was absolutely a violation of due process. That was the last President, not this one.