That suicide was just one that happened to get more news exposure for whatever reason. Yet it made no difference on the national level, unfortunately.

The Newtown massacre was also a giant demonstration of our national failings in mental health. It could have been prevented were it not for all the barriers we build as a nation towards access to mental health treatment. Even worse, when the gun lobby had an opportunity to help turn this in to a discussion on mental health they instead upped the paranoia and now we have more unstable people running around armed instead of fewer. I stated from day one that the massacre was a problem with mental health and all that was said in response was "ZOMG! Obama's after YOUR guns!".

On this regard it is useful to remember that access to mental health resources is often regulated by the same bastards that control access to physical health resources - the insurance industry. Hence if you seek mental health assistance, your insurance company knows about it and it goes into your electronic medical records. While your employer isn't supposed to be able to discriminate against you based on that, your insurance provider is certainly entitled to do so and can raise your rates (through your employer) to the point where your employer has no choice but to fire you - after which point you no longer have access and the downward spiral begins again.

Mental health access should become a national right, completely decoupled from physical health access. Of course we'll never see that happen as the conservatives running the show will declare it a socialist/communist/fascist/whatever-other-inaccurate-ist "takeover" of the industry and it will die at that moment.

Except the second amendment says nothing about self defense. It mentions

But it never says that these arms are for self defense. In fact, if we look at the full text

We see mentions of a Militia and a free State. We never see anything about self defense. The self defense notion is a product manufactured by the gun lobby.

Smitty I honestly don't see the connection here. Please, can you clarify what you mean by

In the context of it somehow being an explanation for

I think you are trying to somehow use the IRS as justification for your desire to outlaw union membership (at least, amongst government employees) but the connection just isn't there. What does the IRS have to do with unions?

I disagree completely with that assertion. It is in now way an "inescapable conclusion". Or are you trying to support a movement to set all government employees' pay to zero? While Citizens United did a great job of reducing the participation of non-wealthy people in government, setting government pay to zero would be a great final blow if that is your goal.

I can't say I've ever shared those particular links, but that is only because I had never seen them before now. I do advocate for mental health assistance and screening, and I have advocated for it previously here on slashdot as well.

Allow me to be direct; I believe that mental health needs vastly more attention and resources committed to it than what it currently gets in this country. Furthermore I believe that the stigma associated with it needs to go away.

Unfortunately I think the stigma is the bigger problem. It goes back generations and it continues to persist in the current age. It isn't like some of the other stigmas that have subsided over time, and in some pockets of culture it is genuinely getting worse. I have no idea how to counter that on a scale broader than my own family and community.

The challenge is in the accuracy. Generally a very small part of the brain has to be stimulated. Miss it and you could end up with a problem worse than the one you were trying to solve. When we figure out a way to more precisely target the right regions - a method that will likely take the surgeon out of the most precise part of the procedure - then we'll really be making great progress.

... we might reach a similar level in the states with regards to taking mental health seriously. Hopefully we don't face too many more massacres before then.

Please clarify how that is in line with the statement it was posted in reply to. Other than you hate both organized labor and the IRS, I don't see a connection between the two.

And neither do unions. Unions work for their members. How do you see unions being somehow magically able to "regulate the lives of random people"? Union members pay dues and vote. Arguably unions - which few remain of any relevance, anyways - are a more direct form of democracy than what our country has devolved into (even more quickly so since the passing of Citizens United).

You have at least as much faith in your conservative heroes as I have in any democrat currently holding office in DC - and for that matter you have vastly more faith in them than I have in President Lawnchair.

Where does the Second Amendment dictate that people should be able to fire off more than 10 rounds per minute? I've brought up the full text of the second amendment here before and it makes no mention of that - amongst many other things. If the Second Amendment protects the "right" to fire off arbitrary amounts of ammunition in fleetingly short amounts of time, doesn't it also protect the "right" to own hellfire missiles or Sherman Tanks?

And why is it that on other matters you are fine to leave the states and jurisdictions to pass their own laws, but on this particular situation you want the federal government to step in and tell the smaller governments how to do their jobs?

I believe you have made that statement many times before, which goes well with your general disdain for organized labor. What you have not answered though is why this particular type of freedom of association should be banned when others are not. If someone choses of their own free will to be part of a union how is that different from choosing of their own free will to be a member of a specific church? Why defend so steadfast one and attack so steadfast the other?

You have given us long and extensive lists of government employees you would like to see lose their jobs, and it goes well beyond only those who hold an elected office or are appointment by people who do.

So would you enjoy it enough to do it for free, such as to not be a hypocrite asking for the end of employment for other government employees while being one yourself?

No, I would not say that. I don't hold anything against government employees. I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the "government small enough to drown in a bathtub" types who have themselves been government employees for decades. Hell the Kevlar Kandidate has held office longer than President Lawnchair had prior to be elected POTUS, in spite of his attempting to brand himself as some kind of clever "outsider".

My point is that the whole "morally blameworthy" is excessively squishy. Not only could it incorporate punishment of fully victimless crimes (when it crimes are defined on what people see as "blameworthy") but it does nothing to prevent the problem of unequal enforcement. It appears that your original thesis here is that if the high capacity magazine ban where equally enforced (and existed where the interview you mention took place) then your Mr. Gregory would be expecting to serve jail time. To swing the pendulum back the other way, if your party were to outlaw sodomy, would you really enforce it equally - charging republican politicians, clergymen, etc, as much as charging liberals - or would that bit of unequal enforcement not matter any more?

So then can we get back to the text that was in the source you gave? What does "morally enforceable" mean to you, and how it is not incompatible with equal enforcement of the law?

That job works in opposition to your political ambition of putting all government employees out of work. Even after President Lawnchair's ambition of giving everyone two years free at community college fizzles out and leads to nothing (and we all know it will) you would still be a government employee working for the community college.

Although it seems a lot of your heroes have been collecting checks from the government for some time, so maybe that doesn't bother you.

Someone came here to change the tune to that of their tired song, and it wasn't me.

Clearly this was orchestrated by his illuminati in their interest of global domination. They'll be at your door soon for your mandatory abortion.