Plus we have heavy regulation of automobiles and their safety features, so that road deaths are going down while miles driven continue to rise. Gun deaths are mostly consistent with number of people who own guns (both have been slowly dropping for a few decades).

They're gun nuts. Masculine insecurity is 90% of gun ownership. Why else would you want to wear your strap-on in public?

And you cannot stop selling guns to idiots, because the NRA opposes any background checks for any reason.

What is hilarious is that most of these "gun enthusiasts" were probably livid when the addresses of gun owners (from public records) were publicly posted in New England a few years ago.

I'm not anti-gun, but I'm anti-idiot. Limit handguns, mandate background checks and periodic training, and punish people who kill when they fear a deadly bag of skittles. Then you can own your very own phallic security blanket and I can be a bit more confident that you won't kill someone I care about because they wear a hoodie and have the wrong color skin.

Those companies don't want to replace drivers. Drivers buy cars, and if you can't "imagine yourself behind the wheel of this car" then it's harder to sell someone an overpriced hunk of metal just because it is styled a bit differently. Those companies just want to assist drivers (help them park or stay in in their lane), so their videos will be much less impressive.

Only google seems to want to replace drivers completely.

It's a desert. The government likely owns it because nobody else wants it. If they gave it away, people still wouldn't take it because they don't want to pay taxes on it.

What Bundy did, using someone's property without permission... where I grew up, that's called "tresspass" or "theft" or somesuch. If he wanted to protest, he could have not used the public land and put up signs saying so, or called his congresscritters, or did any of the other things that protesters do. Maybe even used it for one year without paying as a protest. But using it for 10 years without paying means "dishonest cheapskate who wants to abuse the tragedy of the commons", not "protestor".

Such religious ferver, attacking something I did not say and do not believe, while ignoring what I did say. You truly believe the Holy Gospel of the NRA, that all those who do not worship the NRA wish to destroy every last gun.

Again: the NRA is a religion and does not represent the desires of the majority of its adherents. It perpetuates itself by convincing gullible people that if they do not support the NRA then evil forces will throw them into Hell (a gunless society). You believe this in the absence of all evidence and against all evidence (blind faith).

So your theory is that unlike every other religious organization, the NRA does what its members want rather than the members doing what the NRA wants. Nice theory. Every religious zealot believes that their religion is different; every non-zealot sees that they are largely identical.

Though the gun manufacturers are part of it, a much larger part is that the NRA only exists as long as they can whip people up into a frenzy to donate money. So even though gun control laws have been completely gutted in the USA, the NRA has to keep on whipping up the masses or else the organization will fade away. See also: Greenpeace.

The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.

You're right. For example, laws against polluting only stop those who are not polluting. But so what? Do you think the laws against polluting should be repealed? Do you think that when the laws were passed that polluting did not decrease?

Are you claiming that gun control laws are useless if one person ignores them? Australia passed laws in 1996 to greatly limit firearms. The number of firearms and the number of violent deaths in Australia both suffered major declines in the years since then.

Somalia isn't actually used as an example of a place with no government. Somalia is used as an example of what would actually happen if you get rid of a central government the way that many libertarians want. Somalia is used by many (including me) to mock those idiots who actually want "anarchy". Sure, in the US we'd likely end up with some form of corporate oligarchy disaster rather than a Somalia-type disaster if the Ayn Rand worshipers ever get what they want (and if the Rand-worshiping politicians ever did what they claim to want rather than what they actually do).

But yes, Cody is an idiot.

So you think that the spam was initiated by Google and not by one of the many sites you went to to learn about this plastic?

We can quibble about "basic human right", but since it affects deathbed decisions, inheritance, and taxation "marriage" affects a lot of rights.

The government is involved because of the aforementioned issues, since we have jointly decided to give our government some say-so over those issues. We can argue if this is wise, though I'm not sure how else we could resolve those issues.

It is limited to two people partly because western civilization has had only two-person marriage for over a thousand years, party because 3+ person marriages raise some new issues that would have to be worked out, and partly because most western polygamous groups have used it to award underage girls against their will to old, powerful men. I expect that 3+ person marriages will come in a few decades.

I'm not sure that boycotting Firefox is the correct action, but consumer boycotts seem pretty common by all sides of this issue.

We cannot make an explode-proof cell phone battery, but you expect that a charge of C4 in a phone would only explode in the 1% of cell phones stolen by thieves, and not the 99% that you and I own?

Really, that is the same statement as "if I and all of my neighbors own guns, then as long as I ignore all gun-shot statistics I'm sure that only thieves will be shot by those guns." Or "by ignoring all of the death-row cases overturned by DNA, I'm sure that only guilty people are put to death in the USA."

Totally ignoring the "malfunctioning C4" problem, you really want a phone that a hacker using a 0-day could make explode either next to your head or your crotch? Either way, "just say no".

I am amused that you complain about people using blind belief rather than research, and then state your blind belief without any research. Well, it's not much, but 30 seconds of googling implies that this works fairly well in other places and is not regularly abused.

Perfect quote for the gun debate. "The facts don't support me, but gosh darn it, I know that guns make me safer! It may not be truth, but it's truthy!"

I love the idea of phones exploding in a thiefs hand, but since nothing is perfect, we would just have more personal injury lawsuits, and I certainly don't want any more of those!

IP law is so complex that only people who have studyed it for years can understand nontrivial cases? That seems right. I wish it were not so, but them I wish I could understand particle physics and molecular biochemistry without years of study too.

The anti-vaxxers and the anti-AGW folks show the hilarity that results when people assume that they know more than the experts.

3). A patent should have a far shorter term. 6 year patents on technology would usually give the inventor a good chance to capitalize on his invention. We can quibble on the length but shorter terms would solve most of these issues.