Well, you do make moving the goalposts look exhausting. I haven't tried it myself but I think I'll opt for continuing to directly address text instead.

I can't understand it because there is no connection there. You and many others pretend that there is, but that won't make it so.

Because the gun lobby is the primary profiteer of this paranoia. There is no mention of self defense in the Second Amendment, period. You can twist it all you want and harp BS about the intent of people who died over a hundred years before you were born, but the fact of the matter is that there is no mention of self defense in the text that they wrote.

Common sense tells us that the overwhelming majority of all people in this country never, ever, have a need for a gun for self defense. Common sense tells us that more people are killed accidentally by guns every year than are protected by them. Common sense tells us that the Second Amendment does not mention self defense.

No, it would appear that you are the one who wears blinders to the situation. We have 40 hour work weeks because of organized labor. We have worker's compensation for injuries on the job because of organized labor. We have a minimum wage and rights to file grievances because of organized labor. We have occupational safety standards because of organized labor.

You focus only on the things that your political heroes blame on organized labor, regardless of whether or not those things are rooted in reality.

So you wouldn't want someone working for the DMV for 10 years? What about police and fire? And what about disabled people who can't find work in the private sector but can hold reasonable jobs in their local government?

I don't really see what any of this has to do with unionization, though.

A higher turnover in congress I would generally endorse. The problem though is that the overwhelming opinion of the American voter follows the line of "congress is bad, buy my guy is GREAT". So good luck getting traction on and kind of term limit for them.

It seems you have given up on the carrot and now are hoping to motivate me with only the stick. Granted, the carrot wasn't that appetizing, but it was better than this.

I heard they called one of them a "slashdot reader".

If there was, then that means that free will means nothing and everything is determined by fate.

And in spite of that, the budgets for NIH, NSF, and DOE - the three largest funding agencies from the federal government for scientific research - has been consistently flat or declining in real dollars over the past decade-plus. If the people support it, they aren't communicating it well through their congressional representatives.

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).