I disagree, the saying time heals all wounds is particulalry apt to traumatic events, what seems impossible to recover from without such dastract treatment a week after the event, may beome manageable a few months out, and just a bad memory in a few years.

There are many key differences between Europe and the U.S., while most European countries are homogenous, they also have long standing grudges with their neighbors, which generally is unkonwn in the U.S., except for perhaps a trace or north vs south stemming from a little conflict about 140 years ago. Europeans also tend to identify themselves with their country first and as being European second, wher in the U.S. most of the citizen identify with being an American first, and a Texan, Californian, etc second.

Yes, and the voting rights act also causes congressional districts to be drawn based on based upon demographic and racial lines and not geography. Here in Louisiana the mandate for equal black / white racial reprepentation and the "need" for one majority black congressional district some years ago resulted in a (now defunct) congressional district that basically ran down the I-49 corridor from the northwest corner of the state to the southeast corner, ballooning up around urban centers then in some places only being a few miles wide yet stretching hundreds of miles long. At some point we need to remember that issue other than race effect the needs of the population.

Sure you can, people do it every day, the law requiring serial numbers on guns was the Gun Control Act of 1968, the reason for the serial number requirement was one of many parts of the act designed to increase the cost of making a gun to remove cheap (and cheaply built) guns from the market so certain recently politically empowered minorities could not afford to own a gun. The major gun makers approved of this since almost all of them had been stamping serial numbers for decades on all but their cheapest models for warranty reasons, etc and they did not like the cheap mostly foreign competition.

I was with you righ up until reasonable regulation, that is the problem regulation is not reasonable, as anyone you should try to regulate disregard the law.

Enjoy a new movie, what is this the 20th century?

Another problem here is that the "working poor" as you refer to them don't tend to buy new cars, and I can tell you from recent personal experience that there is a distinct price premium on higher quality older fuel efficient cars. Last week my son decided it was time to upgrade from his first car, a 17 year old Toyota Camry to a 5 year old Nissan, the Nissan was bought from a private party who is moving out of the country, so the Camry is up for sale on the private market now. In helping him out doing price comparisons, etc. I have spotted a distinct trend where fuel economy seems to be greatly effecting the real world asking / selling prices of older "cheap" cars. With 15+ year old Camry's and similar going for well over "book" value, and similar vintage SUV's etc. going well under, at least in the local market. To put some real numbers on this, a late 90's Camry that gets around 28-29 mpg in good condition is selling in the $2,500 - $3,000 ballpark, where a similar vintage gas guzzler (Ford Crown Vic, Explorer, etc.) is typically a sub $1,500 car even if in great shape. Even pick up trucks which have traditionally retained value better than cars, don't seem to demand the prices that these more fuel effiecent sedans do. This trend also extends into the prices on more recent models such as the 2008 Nissan my son just purchased, however the numbers there are not as dramatic.

I think what we tend to forget is how much of a chore that travel was to people that were walking or traveling by wagon. My paternal grandmother grew up in a what was one of the last frontier areas in the central part of the United States, in the late 1890's the 50 mile wide strip of land in western Louisiana that was disputed territory with Spain prior to the Texas Independence in the 1830's , and remained virtually uninhabited until timber rush of the 1880's. The nearest city of any size was the river / ocean port city of Lake Charles 50 miles away by road or 75 miles indirectly by rail 10 miles away (post 1905). During this time the town she lived in was a booming timber mill town with a couple of thousand people, her father owned one of the two general stores in the town, and would travel to Lake Charles once every 4-6 weeks for supplies., this was usually done by wagon, taking 2 or 3 wagons which his children would help drive. This was a 2 day trip, the first day was spent traveling with the empty wagons to a point where there was a ferry that crossed into Lake Charles on the west bank of the Calcasieu river near the present day town of Moss Bluff, where they would camp out over night in the wagons. Early the following morning her father would take the wagons into to Lake Charles (which had a population of 7,000- 12,000 people at this time) to buy goods, leaving the kids at camp to fix food for the day's travel, and prepare the wagons., they would then set off traveling home with their loaded wagons by mid morning, arriving back home late in the evening. Needless to say such long distance travels were not common for many of the children of the community, and likely few of the adults as well, and this was around the turn of the 20's century, well into the age of steam engines, and around the birth of the automobile..

It is not just willingness to through money at the problem, but to cut through the red tape. At one point in the Manhattan project they needed the use of a large amount of silver (6,000 tons) to build the magnets for one of the Uranium processing plants at Oak Ridge TN (There was a war time shortage of Copper) So they "borrowed it from the U.S. Treasury, a mid level procurement officer went to Washington with a a letter saying a AAA priority war project needed it,...

Wow Slashdot posted an announcement about an upcoming event BEFORE it happened, this has to be a first

The problem is only a tiny fraction of the population understands the issue, and as long as we use terms like metadata and billing records they will not understand. When we talk about this we need to make it clear we are talking about the records that include who, when, and where EVERYONE is when they make or receive a phone call, and WHO they are talking too. As well as the implication for this in a connected society, such as in effect giving the government HISTORICAL tracking of your location any time your carrying a cell phone, ....

The is pre-Vietnam thinking, what can a bunch of farmers with hundred year old flint locks do againt a modern military...

Also when it comes to those big guns the army has far fewer of them many people think, in the case of the M1 Abrams tank, about 9,000 have been built over the last 33 years, not all of those are in the U.S. or even still in service. Compare this to the number of current NRA members and you are talking hundreds to one, add to it all the NRA converts would have if hostility breaks out and as Stalin said quantity has a quality all its own.

You answer your own question, in countries where it is illegal to have a gun anywhere in public you get an equal concentration of people that are unarmed everywhere. In the U.S. when you have gun free ZONES that makes everyone in them unarmed easy victims for criminals. Take it from the violent criminals point of view, you intend armed robbery against someone and accept that you may have to hurt or kill them to reach your goal. Would you rather pick a place where your victim may be armed or where you know they willl not be. And where the only armed people are uniformed law enforcement that can be easily spotted at a great distance.

So far this thread seems to be about debating the merits of prison rape jokes, and the topic of transgender rights, etc. in general. One thing I do not see, is any discussion about the timing, could this be a legal strategy to avoid military prison, etc.?

and repeatedly