It won't happen for precisely the reason you stated. If one got through, it would open the floodgates and overwhelm the judiciary. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the reality.

BART police shooting of Oscar Grant is another one. Cop grabs his gun and shoots a guy who's laying on the ground and the guy dies the next morning. 2 years. Minus time served. If the roles were reversed and Grant had shot the officer, he'd have spent the rest of his natural born life in prison.

If the general public wakes up, most of them will beg the government for Ambien so they can get back to sleep. This isn't an issue of education; it's a problem of apathy.

FedGov were fine with Bundy and crew while they were hanging out in the middle of nowhere running around with guns being all anti-government. If they got within 50 miles of the DC line, they'd be face-to-face with Apache gunships and worse and every one of them would wind up in a prison cell or a bodybag very quickly. No one will comprehend the full militarization of law enforcement in this country until an incident like that happens. Quite honestly, we're approaching the point where a major metro police force, combined with local Federal law enforcement assets, could hold their own in a fight with the US Army.

That should frighten people. It doesn't, partially because they'd never believe it, but it should. Sadly, I don't know how to turn back that tide. No politician will be seen taking resources away from law enforcement because that's political suicide. Violence would be deadly, destructive, and would only reinforce the need for even more militarization. And if violence is your only resort, you're truly in Hell already. Not really sure what else there is besides finding somewhere else to try again. The Founding Fathers of this country knew having a standing military was a huge risk to the freedom of the people. Restrictions were put in place later to ensure the military couldn't be used against civilians except in cases of total rebellion where the government has fallen. With domestic law enforcement's militarization, we have exactly what the Founding Fathers feared most: a force under the control of the government, operating domestically, which has far more firepower than the citizenry. They feared that because they understood that it removes the fear governments have of the reactions of the citizenry when they start working toward oppression and they understood a simple truth: power begets power, and that inevitably leads to oppression. The balance they sought was to keep a government responsive to the needs and wishes of an informed and at least somewhat wise citizenry. A government of regular citizens who cycle in and out of government service would continuously bring fresh ideas and fresh perspectives to maintain the power balance. Of course, the reality is that it's now just millionaires sponsored by millionaires and billionaires doing whatever they need to do to consolidate power even as they're re-elected decade after decade using political party identification.

Much of this is the fault of the people. We've become so soft and delicate that we can't imagine doing many of the things government now does for us. Police our own streets? That's dangerous! Protect ourselves and our families? That's dangerous! Hell, a good chunk of our population can't even feed itself without the government. We've stepped further and further back away from running our own lives and allowed the government to fill the vacuum. Why? Because it's easier and more comfortable. It's always easier when someone else is taking care of things for you. Everything has to be safe now. Everything has to be clean now. Everything has to be easy. And if it isn't, we expect the government to step in and take it over. Until all that's left is a bunch of sissies in padded outfits in padded rooms staring at a TV and drooling on the floor while an IV keeps them fed. We've allowed ourselves to become so weak and so uninformed that we're almost begging to be taken advantage of at this point.

Here's a simple example: Of the eligible voters who actually vote (see? I've eliminated something like 60% right there), how many can name everyone in the Federal legislature representing them and can describe the voting record of those representatives on the issues most important to that voter? Let's be incredibly generous and assume it's 20% (yeah, right). So that's 8% of the original. Now how many of those can name everyone at the state level representing them and can describe the record of those individuals on the voter's most important issues? Again, let's be incredibly generous and say 10%. Of those, how many follow all available candidates for those offices and vote according to their beliefs rather than their party? Let's be super generous and say 50% of those who are left. Now let's ask the simple question: can you expect a representative republic to function properly if just 0.4% of voters are making informed decisions about who's being elected? Of course not. We're screwed because we're too lazy, ignorant, and apathetic for our government to function correctly. My advice is to start looking at other places to live and to make sure you have skills they actually want there. At least then you have options.

Did those six computers that crashed just happen to be the systems that belonged to the six people under congressional investigation for politically motivated abuses of authority? Did those six computers happen to include the email server(s) and associated storage devices and include any and all backups? And did all of that stuff just happen to crash in such a way that virtually nothing of any consequence was recoverable in a clean room? All happening at the same time as a congressional investigation began?

I don't believe their IT department is enormously competent. In fact, I believe quite the opposite. However, anyone who thinks this is anything other than a deliberate, coordinated campaign to destroy evidence linking higher-ups (not necessarily including the President, but not necessarily excluding him) is a complete idiot. I can believe their admins are incompetent enough to fail to maintain proper server-side retention policies. What I can't believe is that their regular maintenance plans include tearing out desktop and laptop hard drives and smashing them with hammers. And if you want to believe that, go right ahead, but you know and I know that it's bullshit.

Indeed; I had intended to put "the earliest I've seen". The point being made was that this is a complaint as old as humanity, so I would certainly not attempt to pick out any specific genesis for it. I just didn't finish typing the whole thought, which was a simple mistake.

I'd like to direct you to the following quote:

"That a century of the younger men wished to confer with their elders on the question to which persons they should, by their vote, entrust a high command, should seem to us scarcely credible. This is due to the cheapened and diminished authority even of parents over their children in our day." - Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 26

This was the earliest, but by far not the only example of "kids today and their rock-and-roll music", as you put it. Examples exist throughout the last century, especially around the turn of 1900, where long and boring essays were published on the subject. However, the above excert is from Livy's History of Rome, written around 25BC. So when you say it's trite, that's a bit of an understatement. 2000+ years we've been listening to this shit.

Obviously you've never had your life threatened by someone who means to see you dead. Firearms are used defensively millions of times a year. No doubt you'll try to dispute that, but I'm simply getting info from the CDC:

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,” the CDC study, entitled “Priorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,”

The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council released the results of their research through the CDC last month. Researchers compiled data from previous studies in order to guide future research on gun violence, noting that “almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year.”

When someone breaks into your home at 3am and comes after you with a knife/gun/hammer, and your gun doesn't work, I assure you the analogy is spot-on. If the biometric/RFID/whatever works properly, an innocent life is saved. If it doesn't, an innocent life (or lives if you have a wife and kids) is/are lost. It's really quite simple. You're just choosing to pretend to not get it because you don't like the point being made. That's asinine.

I don't know who "most" people are, but I can tell you that of the few people I've met who've had to use a gun defensively (most of the police officers), they were most certainly in danger before they ever reached for their gun.

Well then I'm quite pleased you didn't have a hand in writing our highest laws. When a person's life is at stake at 3am in their own home, what you want really doesn't matter. They have a natural-born/God-given right to defend themselves. And no amount of undue fear on your part can change that.

That said, I do agree that training is a good thing. In fact, I think it should be mandatory in all public schools (and I'd highly recommend it for private schools) for K-College.

You're missing the point. The point of the analogy is that - in either case - if the sensor fails to function as expected in an emergency situation where stress-induced sweat and lack of fine motor control have major effects, the operator it likely a dead man.

And that's the point. If you won't trust this sensor to activate the brakes on your car when you need them, you shouldn't trust it to activate the firing mechanism on the gun when you need it.

No it won't, because it isn't a good analogy. This would be more like a mandate that all new cars have fingerprint sensors to activate the brakes. No sensor match, no brakes.

You buying one of those?

Let me know when all the major auto manufacturers voluntarily take the sensor technology used in these "smart guns" and puts it in their emergency brakes to prevent unauthorized passengers from pulling it. And as everyone else has said, let me know when the police and military have this technology in all of their guns. At that point, it'd be worth some consideration. Until then, I think anyone buying one of these things for protection is a fool.

One of the more absurd stretches of the Commerce Clause, to be sure. Also one of the more pathetic examples of the failure of this country's government to secure the rights of its people. Ordering a family to destroy food they've grown for themselves; we ought to be embarrassed.

The Feds have stepped all over states' rights since the founding of this country; moreso in the past few decades. The states have finally begun to take notice and many are working to reclaim those rights. The Feds have only been able to get away with it for so long because the states didn't try to stop them. With that changing, things are going to get more and more interesting. As evidence, there have been many recent proposed amendments to state bills on everything from guns to Marijuana that have directed state police to prevent Federal authorities from enforcing Federal laws contrary to the state laws where the state is given priority in the Constitution or at least to not assist Federal authorities in executing such Federal laws. Some have even called for the arrest of Federal authorities taking such actions. While these have been largely defeated thus far, the idea of proposing them would have been unthinkable just a decade ago. There's been a progression that seems to be leading toward state authorities actively resisting Federal authorities enforcing apparently unconstitutional laws.

Not the first time the Supreme Court has been wrong. The Supreme Court decided "separate but equal" was constitutional. It decided Japanese interment was constitutional. And it was apparently constitutional to fire teachers who were members of "subversive" groups. Well, at least until the Supreme Court reversed itself. That's happened numerous times before and it'll almost certainly happen again.

The Supreme Court can rule that Catholicism is the national religion of the United States and that everyone in the US must convert to and practice it zealously. That doesn't make it correct. It can rule that a Federal law stripping all registered Democrats of the right to vote is constitutional. It isn't. Our system of government is imperfect, as is every other. It's run by imperfect humans who are subject to any number of influences that can impede their objectivity. We the people need to stand up, collectively, when our government gets something wrong and get it fixed; not throw our hands up and declare all hope lost because the Supreme Court issued a ruling. We need to be able to do that without a full blown revolution too, since those tend to be very bloody, expensive, and destructive. The way we seem to be tending toward handling this is through our state governments. I think that's one of the healthier ways to correct Federal mistakes and I hope to see the trend continue. As the states assert an increasing level of sovereignty, we'll see the power and scope of the Federal government diminish. Hopefully, that continues until it no longer has such horrifyingly complete dominion over the citizens of the United States.

The Federal government lacks jurisdiction for intrastate commerce. Thus, unless it's being sold across state lines, Federal law doesn't apply. Doesn't matter that the Supreme Court came up with some convoluted reasoning for making the interstate commerce clause apply; the Constitution says what it says. The state's law has the final say for intrastate commerce, and it isn't illegal in all US states.