It is NOT paranoia if they really are out to get you. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. First, you ban large magazines. Another shooting, Then, you ban all semi-auto firearms. Another shooting. Time to ban them all! This is a slight exaggeration, but my point still stands.

We once tried limiting magazine sizes. Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, and it expired after 10 years. Sandy Hook happened DURING this ban. Did crime suddenly drop after the ban? No. Once the ban expired, did crime suddenly shoot back up? Once again, no. So, if a law had NO real effect, why try to do it again? Give me ONE good reason that can be backed up with statistics.

Another popular item is to try to ban guns based on features. How stupid is that? If somebody is shooting at me, I would worry more about the bullets and less about what shape or color the gun is. Simply stated, all semi-auto guns are designed to shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger. The ONLY thing else that matters is the magazine size. SO, if it is straight and the furniture is make of wood, OK. If it is black and plastic, bad. Tell me how that makes sense. Some people even wanted to ban any gun with an "upper gas tube." Really? During an actual shooting, how is the location of the gas tube supposed to change things?

Another thing that I love is "universal background checks." Sounds like a great idea, right? I live in Colorado, where we had major wild fires about a year ago, and we require "universal background checks." They cost $10, and it is hard to find a dealer who will do a background check without a sale. So, people had their houses burn down, so they took their guns. Could they leave them with a friend? Nope, not without a LOT of trouble. Since a gun safe is pretty big and hard to move when you are evacuating, I guess your only choice it to take the guns with you to the hotel (along with your kids, who now have easier access to your guns), or break the law by leaving them with a trusted friend. Nice job, government.

Now, the VAST MAJORITY of gun crimes only involve a few shots (if I recall correctly, about two shots is the average). Would a magazine limit make much of a difference in those cases? Now, how about mass shootings (which are statistically rare - you are about as likely to be hit by lightning as to be a victim of a mass shooting). Could restricting the rights of EVERY PERSON IN AMERICA make a difference in a statistically rare situation? Well, the Aurora theater shooter had his 100-round magazine jam after about 45 rounds. That is apparently not uncommon. If he had five 20-round magazines, or even ten 10-round magazines, he would have probably done more damage since a jam would be less likely. With practice, it only takes about two seconds to change magazines.

Gun laws often make no sense and might actually harm innovation. The law makes a clear distinction between a handgun and a long-gun. During WW2, it was not uncommon to have pistols with separate detachable shoulder stocks (collectors items from what I understand). If you tried doing that today, you would have a "short barreled rifle" which will get you years in Club Fed. If you put a shoulder stock on a pistol, is it suddenly more dangerous? If so, how? So, how does this law make any sense at all? I have yet to hear a single good reason how this law makes anybody any safer, and it has certainly made certain classes if firearm and accessories illegal, stifling innovation.

Which gun laws do you think will actually be obeyed by criminals. I have done nothing illegal (other than speeding). I am an honest citizen. Please explain to me how restricting my rights makes anybody else any safer..... Please..... I have not heard any good reasons yet. You can pass laws to try to stop criminals, but criminals do not obey laws? The point of a law is to define behavior that is considered bad, and to use to apply punishment to people who break the law. The law is remarkable bad at stopping people from doing bad things to begin with.

Finally, if you are determined to take away people's rights to make them safer, go after the 4th amendment. Let police search your car on a hunch. Let "driving while black" be a reason to pull somebody over. It would be totally wrong, but it would actually decrease crime, while tramping on the rights of everybody evenly. I am not saying that this is a good idea, but I am saying that the logic of taking away rights to make everybody safer also leads to the 4th amendment too.

Stoking fear? Right. One of the biggest fears is that the government will outlaw guns. Far-fetched, right? Tell you what. Hop in your time machine to five years ago. Go to Chicago and try to legally buy a gun. Guess what? For the average person five years ago, legally buying a gun was practically impossible. IT is not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you.

Here is a quote from a current US senator:

If I could have banned them all - 'Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns' - I would have!

As to the NRA quote, is there anything unfactual out there? Yes, we live in a very safe country. The odds of any bad violence happening to any one person out there is relatively small (of course, this varies GREATLY by zip code). But dangers are out there. How much danger is enough for you to carry a gun? Only YOU can decide that. However, it is up to you, and should not be up to a politician to tell you "no." Simply stated, if something bad DOES happen to you, how long would it take for you to call 911 and expect help to arrive? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Would that be fast enough?

For the record, I own guns (where I live, it would probably take 20 minutes for a sheriff to show up), but I do not carry one when I am away from home. But I have friends who do, and I respect their decision.

So, most of the "gun deaths" will not be stopped by this technology. I am not saying that the tech is a bad idea -- far from it. I am just saying that the any possible benefit is small, so the tech should be considered optional, not required.

I do agree that the backlash against the company making the product is unjustified. However, the government and the media have tried their best to demonize honest citizens, so many of them are overly-sensitive on the subject.

As I have stated elsewhere, approximately 0.1% of the guns in the US are used in murders. So you want to burden the other 99.9% of them with expensive tech that the owner may not want?

I also like the use of the phrase "gun deaths." So, if a person commits suicide, how would this bracelet stop them if it is their gun. If it is NOT their gun, how would you deny them access to sleeping pills and alcohol, or a car in a closed garage, or even a piece of rope. Maybe we should put neck detectors in all ropes?

Some gun deaths are caused by police shooting a criminal. Do you suppose that those should be stopped? How about legitimate defensive shootings. Do you want to prevent those?

Really, the ONLY statistic that really matters is when a gun is used in a crime. Throwing out a meaningless statistic like "gun death" simply shows a person with an agenda.

Keep in mind the events surrounding the birth of the USA. A bloody war had just be fought where the colonists had just driven off an oppressive government. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is not just to be the army, it was to be an army that could revolt against the government if needed. The Constitution was, in fact, designed to place hard limits on the powers of the government, and to actually make it hard to accomplish anything (checks and balances).

Fortunately, our government is still fairly functional. Armed revolt is not needed currently, and I suspect that it will not be necessary in my lifetime. I certainly hope that it stays that way, but the fact that the citizens are armed should certainly help prevent the politicians from doing anything too unpopular. The implied thread of armed citizens helps keep the government in check.

Look at "Rancher Bundy." The government sent in guys with guns and lots of citizens showed up with their own guns. In the end, everybody went home and nobody got hurt. I am not saying that the rancher was right. What I am saying is that the government was wrong to send in hummers full of guys with M-16s and body armor. The way to go after this sort of issue is to take it to the courts. If they guy is wrong, make him pay a fine. Most farmers and ranchers get some money from the government (as far as I know, not being a farmer). You can attack those funds and penalize him in the wallet. That is MUCH better than sending a group of armed thugs.

Another stat that gun nuts don't like mentioning is that 30% of current gun owners couldn't pass a pyschactric evaluation.

Proof? Just a little bit of proof?

Another statistic: 99.99% of the guns are never used in any sort of murder. So, the gun-grabbers are trying to restrict the rights of ALL Americans to stop the 0.01% of guns that actually cause the problems. This is a statistic that I can back up, using homicide rate, and estimates of US population and gun ownership.

I also seem to recall a fatal stabbing in a school in the last week. If it had been a shooting, lots of people would have been standing up yelling that we need to do something about guns. Where is the vehemence about knives?

I have no problem with adding hi-tech such as this to guns, but it should be OPTIONAL. However, singe New Jersey already has a law that once this thing goes on sale, every gun must have the same feature. This is the problem... If it remains an option, then fine. If it becomes mandatory, that is problematic.

For homes with children, this may be a great idea. For homes without kids, who needs it.

"Whoops, my gun crashed (or the battery died, watch got dropped and broken, etc). Now my ex-husband can feel free to break his restraining order and kill me." I do no want to hear about this story in the news.

Screen is actually surprisingly useful.

You can throw jobs off to a "screen" instance that can run happily. Then, if you have to VPN in from home, you can grab the screen and pick up where you left off. Combine this with "nohup" and you can have jobs that run even when you log off, and you can regain console control from them at any time.

In short, it is the "vnc" of the terminal world.

I agree completely. RTFA. It shows a snipped of Fortran code -- ugly. I cut my teeth on BASIC with a Commodore VIC-20, and, in a way, I still miss it.

Right now I have to bounce around between multiple languages: Verilog, C, TCL, and PERL. I always have trouble remembering exactly how to do a "for" loop in each of these languages. Do you surround the arguments with curly brackets (TCL) or parenthesis (the rest). Do you use commas or semicolons between the arguments? Which languages use "else if" and which ones use "elsif"? Bouncing around between languages sometimes leaves me scrambling to remember exactly how to do something in a particular language.

It has been DECADES since I used BASIC, but I bet that I could still make a pretty good go of making a working program without having to look anything up. The language was simply that easy to learn. Of course, it was not object-oriented and too many "goto"s could kill you. But for simple programs, it could not be beat.

So, you won't approve if they dump Rice and get somebody from the Obama administration, right?

Obama was certainly in a position to undo the damage that Bush did, but he took it to the next level.

Well, we will just have to agree to disagree. However, at least you are willing to look at evidence without resorting to ad hominem attacks. You know what you believe and are actually willing to discuss it logically. I appreciate that.

To put it bluntly, I respect you, although I disagree.

If you ever find yourself in the Colorado Springs area, shoot me an e-mail. I will buy you a beer. We have some truly great micro-breweries around here.

Best of luck to you!

Well you said this:

Regarding Jesus: afaik there's little to no evidence he lived outside of the Bible, which I don't take to be a reliable source.

Well, little to no evidence if you exclude all of the evidence which was enough to convince the scholars. Direct quote from Wikipdedia

Most modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed,[1][2][3] but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts,[4] and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.[5][6][7]

Feel free to ignore "scholars of antiquity" if you want, but this is their subject of expertise. As to why Jesus "caught on," maybe you should ask yourself why this one "caught on" and not the others. Could it be that there is something to it?

I don't happen to think that eternal torment is a great idea either, but if heaven exists, murderers and child molesters certainly do not belong there. Assuming that souls exist and cannot be destroyed, you could describe the afterlife as "heaven" and "not heaven." God is loving, but another one of his characteristics is justice. Honestly, I am usually a little bit more eloquent, but I have a nasty cold and a rather annoying headache right now, so I will leave it at that.

What is even better, there is a current push to welcome the immigrants who come here illegally. I can broadly classify people who want to come to the US into two categories:

1) people who go to the US embassy in their own country, fill out the forms, and wait patiently to get into the US. They try to do things the legal way.

2) People who do not care about the law or the system, and just smuggle themselves here, making their first act in America breaking the law.

Now, guess which one FWD.us believes should become citizens?

If I had my way, for every person in category 2 above that got deported, I would approve somebody from category 1 to enter the country. The net amount of immigrants stays the same, but we get the ones who actually respect the law.