"Banking laws historically have been among the most useful of all laws."

No laws are useful if the government refuses to enforce them. Leading up to 2008, they weren't even enforcing laws against fraud being perpetrated by bankers. They were definitely ignoring rampant securities fraud with the CDS and MBS stuff. In the midst of the disaster, the FDIC refused to follow its "prompt corrective action" mandate. Government also refused to investigate and prosecute thousands of instances of forgery, perjury and the filing of false affidavits related to the mortgage loan mess. Utter and complete fail by the government.

I'd rather have an unregulated system and knowingly accept the risks than have a federal government "regulated" banking system where you never know if the regulations will be enforced. I guarantee that if we had a free market banking system, I'd be earning more than 0.25% on my money market accounts. How good are federal banking laws when everyone who saves is being robbed on a daily basis?

The people that run big corporations are bound by law to maximize the profits of their shareholders. Your subject line says it all. It should come as no surprise that they put profit above all else. What makes you think they give a damn or should give a damn about the "needs and rights of everyone else"?

By contrast, the government is NOT bound by law to serve corporations. They're supposed to be serving the public. So, who are the bad guys here? The people that are doing exactly what we should expect them to do, or the people that are betraying the public to serve special interests?

I constantly hear the refrain that we need the federal government and federal regulators to protect us from the evil corporations.

From what I see, we're paying federal employees to either do nothing (SEC, OTS, CFTC, etc.) or to actively undermine our best interests (BLM, NSA, DofA, FDA, etc.)

A considerable fraction of federal regulators, especially the financial regulators, either came from or will go to the very companies they are supposed to be regulating! They refuse to enforce the laws for fear of jeopardizing their future employment prospects on Wall St.

We might as well fire them all as pay them for doing worse than nothing.

Don't you think that the ACLU and other plaintiffs are well aware of the arguments that the government has used in previous cases?
I'm not saying that they'll win, but they've obviously got something more than what they had with ACLU v. NSA or Amnesty v. Clapper.

I'm certainly cheering for Wikimedia, et al. Of course the odds are against them when you have the government deciding how much power the government has.
The ACLU lawyers are no dummies however. This time around they must have something that they believe can be used to demonstrate legal standing. They're not going to file a new case that the government will be able to shut down using the exact same strategies used to kill the previous cases. Remember also that none of the Snowden revelations had come out prior to ACLU v. NSA or Amnesty v. Clapper.

In an earlier post I made it clear that this idea about a correlation between firearms availability and suicide attempts is completely bogus. Also, the idea of making it a crime to have unlocked firearms in a home is totally insane.

Something I might be willing to consider is adding people who are admitted to an emergency room after a suicide attempt to the NICS database. At least temporarily. (NICS database contains the list of people who are prohibited from buying firearms).

Just thought of this, but maybe we should also allow people to get themselves added voluntarily! I've got no issue with that. "I think I'm a danger to myself your honor and I'd like to limit my own ability to acquire a firearm." I think they'd have to be insane to do that, but it would be their choice.

I'd be very worried about the implementation, but I think it could work. Impose a very rigid criteria for adding a person and give them a chance to argue against it in court. Then provide an inexpensive way for the person to get their name removed. Or maybe they're automatically removed after 1 year or something?

Just a thought.

You don't think that libertarians "care" about their families, friends and other human beings in general? I beg to differ. But getting to the point, I think we're talking about this firearms/suicide thing in the context of public policy. i.e. allowing the government to mandate what we can and can't do in our own homes, right?

I certainly sympathize with someone who is so unhappy that they are contemplating suicide, but there is no clear link between availability of firearms and attempted suicide. Only that people who use a firearm in the attempt are more successful.
Therefore, making it a crime for 330 million people to have unlocked firearms in their home is not demonstrating how much I "care" for the .02% of people who are suicidal.

".... every single day there is at least one innocent child in this county who is shot as a direct result of an irresponsible owner."

I assume you're talking about "irresponsible" but otherwise law-abiding citizens, not criminals.
What's your definition of "child"? Anti-gun groups will frequently define anyone under 21 as a "child" to pad their data. As if an 18 year old gang-banger is a "child".

Let's suppose anyone under 14 y/o is a "child", which makes it convenient to analyze CDC data:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...

For 2013. Deaths by accidental discharge of firearms:

Age : Number
0- 1 : 3
1-4 : 27
5-14 : 39

Doesn't exactly square with one "every day" and I think that even age '14' is a bit of a stretch in defining a "child".

If that law ever gets enacted in my country, I will hang a rifle from the ceiling in front of my bay windows and report myself to the authorities.

Molon Labe

How the hell is having loaded and easily accessible firearms in your own home "irresponsible"? What good is a firearm for defensive purposes if you have to open a safe before you can get to it?

I'll proudly stand up to authoritarian a$$holes like Michael Bloomberg who want to tell me what I can and can't do with my firearms in my own home. You seriously want police going around serving warrants and arresting people for the "crime" of having unlocked firearms? If they start doing that, maybe it IS time for a revolution?

It's "irresponsible" to pass a law telling criminals that it's open season for burglaries and home invasions because citizens won't be able to get to their firearms in time to defend themselves.

..."males have significantly more 'successful' suicides. And that's due to the availability of guns..."

Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. The only thing it demonstrates is that people who use firearms in a suicide attempt are more successful than people who use other means. It's not evidence that the availability of guns is the causal factor in the attempt.

Nothing but more theory and anecdote.

"You can reduce the rate of suicide in the United States ... if fewer people had guns in their homes ..."

Total nonsense. The number of households with firearms has been on a multi-decade downward trend:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Meanwhile, the suicide rate per 100k people has been quite stable at 10-15 per 100k over the last 60 years:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/...

So where's the evidence that fewer gun-owning households means a lower suicide rate?
The ONLY consistently documented relationship between firearms and suicide is this:

"Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent ... with a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent."

True and I'm sure that in their so-called "study", the 10-15% of people who survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound regret it and claim it was an impulsive act, but that's hardly "proof" that access to firearms was a causal factor in suicide attempts.

This also raises the important question of how many people really want to die and how many are just desperate for attention. The "cry for help" suicide is a well known and documented fact. If you slice your wrists perpendicular to the length of the arm, you're either incompetent or you don't really want to commit suicide. Fire a 12 gauge shotgun in your mouth and there's zero doubt that you're genuinely trying to kill yourself.

Note also that the USA is #30 worldwide in suicide rate, far behind many countries with strict gun control laws. Take Japan for example with a rate of 20.7/100k.

This is just a bunch of leftist academics trying to further the gun control agenda without real evidence. Gun control groups like Michael Bloomberg's astroturf "Everytown" are actually pushing laws requiring that all firearms in private homes be locked up ... where they will be useless for defense. And imagine police getting search warrants and breaking down your door because someone saw a gun on your nightstand? Insanity..

I agree with the "waste their time" strategy. We should have a regular competition to see who can keep one of these people on the line the longest.

That's an excellent idea.

Reminds me of a Jerky Boys call. He was telling his imaginary wife to STFU while he was on the phone and then, after he had supposedly knocked her unconscious he wanted the guy on the other end to be a witness for him and tell the cops that his wife had been interrupting their conversation and he therefore had no choice but to hit her.
I think I'm going to add an additional piece to your plan where I step outside and light off a firecracker before getting remorseful and telling the caller that I need his contact info for my criminal defense.

Indeed. I had one of these guys call me up a couple of weeks ago and after I had messed around with him for at least 10 minutes he got all angry and said "Sir! Stop wasting my time!" before hanging up.

I was LMAO, first because he was still referring to me as "sir" and second because I was supposedly wasting his time after he was the one that called me.