Do you mean because our second amendment is derived from their own bill of rights? Most people forget that this country was largely made up of Englishmen, and many of our ideas are based on ones that existed already, and this is one of them. The right to bear arms was considered a natural right, not even a written law until after a King had attempted to disarm his subjects. And now, even though the right to bear arms is also made clear in their bill of rights, firearms are still heavily regulated in England without infringing on peoples' rights. How is this possible? Easy, they understand the right to bear arms doesn't mean anyone and everyone should be allowed to own assault weapons. There are guns in England, despite what many Americans seem to think, they're just regulated. And it would make sense for us to follow suit, given that the main argument against gun control is really just a reference to England's own laws.

Nobody is trying to say if you print a gun and use it, it's the gun's fault. The blame still falls wholly on the person who committed the crime. What you don't seem to understand is that laws are meant to keep people safe and secure, not just punish people after the fact. Nobody needs to prove they can't handle drinking and driving to be told not to do it, there's no reason to wait until people get hurt to stop something. Treating rules and regulations as an attack on your person is just being childish. As for 3d printing guns in particular, I'd support a method of stopping it as long as it didn't interfere with anything else, I just don't know if that's even possible. The reasoning is straightforward: Guns are regulated, making them at home bypasses regulation. Nobody would think twice about shutting down a lab producing alternatives to prescription drugs, it's really the same thing. Somehow with guns people get it in their heads the rules should all be different, that because they're mentioned in the constitution we can't regulate them. This is not the case. Even freedom of speech is regulated to some degree, primarily to keep people from inciting violence. Laws are not there because somebody assumes you can't be responsible, laws are there because it's been proven time and time again that in a group as large as this country, there are enough people who can't be responsible to justify regulating dangerous things. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have crime, everyone would just be good and responsible because it's what's right.

Actually, I think you need to look up the definition of socialism. The government owning the factories is a part of one possible implementation, but what you describe is pretty much the definition of socialism. While you're at it, you should look up fascism, too. Forcing people to hire humans could be done under a fascist government, but that's not all. As it is, we live in a republic that people call a democracy, and still there are equal opportunity employment laws that often do result in being forced to hire one person over another not based on merit but on characteristics that shouldn't even be considered in the hiring process. I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other on those laws, I'm just pointing out that you don't seem to understand what you're saying.

People can own shares in Google, too. It doesn't mean people just have shares in Google, they still need to earn money to buy them.

Ah, I see, you expect people of the world to endorse socialism. I'm not sure what sorcery you intend to use to force this, or how you think we can successfully transition to such a system, but I'm interested to hear it. Keep in mind, human nature has always been the big problem with things like socialism; in general, people don't want to be equal, they want more, and they certainly don't want to hand what they've earned to their neighbor who didn't earn it.

Actually, it's more like making a DVD player that gets you the DVD for free - it makes sense for thieves, but pisses off the people who spend their time and money providing the content you just stole. The problem here is the ads are the payment for the service. You can call it user friendly, but it's user friendly like piracy is. Now, I'm actually fine with pirating content that's made deliberately unavailable (Disney!) or is particularly hard to find, like for me it's typically certain old foreign movies with subtitles, but Youtube is a service that provides all sorts of videos for free in an easily searchable database, in exchange all you're supposed to do is sit through a fifteen second ad. Even without this app, WP8 users had access to it through the site, just not a specialized app. Youtube is what I wish cable would turn into, it's sickening that I have to pay over $200 for cable and still sit through ads while being severely limited to what I can watch when. Even on-demand rotates movies monthly, AND has an additional fee for new movies. Youtube is a steal, if you don't want to watch the ad you can take fifteen seconds to mentally thank the original developers for having and implementing such a great idea, and Google for turning it into something with lasting power.
As for being against other ad-blockers, I use one to block intrusive ads, but I turn it off for site I frequent (like Slashdot) with the exception of overly intrusive ones. I don't bother trying to skip Youtube ads because they're not a big deal and aren't even on many videos I've seen, although to be fair I don't go on Youtube often.

I never claimed it would be 100% effective, I was pointing out that saying we shouldn't have it because it wouldn't be 100% effective is not logical. So really, if you were paying attention, I was saying it won't be 100% effective but we should do it anyway because it will help.
As for your right to own a gun, I'm alright with that, unless you specifically want to own assault weapons, which is just crazy. Before you respond, here's my reasoning, simplified for your simple mind. Whatever is easy for your average joe to get will be easy for criminals to get. An AR for home defense is an accident waiting to happen, odds are your home will not be invaded by anything you need more than a couple shots to take down, because as many who oppose gun control will tell you most crimes committed using firearms are committed with handguns, not assault weapons. If you think you need an AR to fight against the tyranny of the government, one possibility is you expect to fight the military, in which case you are hopelessly outgunned anyway, not to mention that possibility depends on the military (made up of people like you and I) being alright with attacking their friends and families. The next possibility is civil war, in which case you're fighting your neighbors (probably even moreso than in the first civil war) and being able to own an AR yourself means so can they, so that doesn't really work out. After this handful of situations we have invasion by another country, which would also result in you being hopelessly outgunned. I'm probably missing some example, but you get where this is going, there's no real benefit to owning assault weapons.
The second amendment does not say you have a right to buy the biggest gun ever made just so you can imagine something else was that big, I'm sure if they knew what an effective killing tool firearms would turn into they would've been a bit more restrictive even then. Now, I respect the constitution and I think it's an important document that establishes certain basic rights, but even the folks who wrote it made it easy to change because they knew it wasn't perfect. I really think people need to stop pointing to a 200 year old document as if it's infallible. And I'm sure you'll shoot back and tell me how disrespectful it is to say that or how unpatriotic I'm being, but if you ask me that's backwards. The Constitution was never intended to be unalterable, that's why they created a process to allow changes to be made to it, it's only supposed to need a majority vote. And unlike the first amendment, that could realistically happen with the second.
Finally, let me tell you that as a gun owner myself, I don't think they need to take away all firearms and I don't think it'd ever happen, despite people saying requiring paperwork is the first step towards that. Where I live, paperwork has been required for as long as I can remember, and my first time filling it out I did make a mistake. I didn't go to jail, I was never charged or fined or even spoken to by the police. I had to fill the form out again. Wow! Huge hassle to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, right? If you do something stupid, like lie about a criminal conviction, it probably isn't an accident and I hope they do make a federal case out of it as well as keep you from owning a gun. As for your gun registry concerns, I fail to see the huge problem with a gun registry. I have a big problem with all of the other information the government seems to be collecting, such as yesterday's story about them saving all digital communications, but a national gun registry seems like a fantastic idea. If every recovered bullet could be compared to a database of bullets fired from guns prior to their sale, it'd make finding murder weapons much easier. They'd still need to actually find it and perform all the usual tests, but if they can quickly find the original purchaser it could speed things up.

Worst. Thinking. Ever. "Current laws aren't 100% effective, so let's not bother with them anymore." This suggests you don't support any law against anything, ever, because it might not be 100% effective. I'm hoping that's not the case, and if it is, may your wish come true and your neighbor shoot you and take your stuff, because laws aren't going to stop him anyway. Beyond that fatal flaw in this silly argument, your comparison is drugs. Certain key differences between the drug and gun markets make it an absurd comparison. Without going into far too much detail, the big difference is that guns start off being sold legally before they hit the streets. I don't mean guns legally purchased are stolen, I mean the laws are so lax that criminals have numerous ways to get them through legal channels. They'll either have someone else purchase the gun for them, or see a corrupt gun dealer to buy them off him. What's important about this? Their means for acquiring guns is still based entirely on the LEGAL AVAILABILITY of them. If they weren't so easily available, there wouldn't be so many on the street. I find it disturbing that so many people gloss over this basic piece of logic. Guns are only so available to criminals because it's so easy so get them legally. Now, I'm not for taking everyone's guns away as NRA nuts seem to think everyone opposed to them is, but I do see a dire need for reform, and polls suggest that almost all of America agrees. The problem is while we're all saying, "Just let us run better background checks and get rid of huge loopholes people use to avoid them!" there's a small percentage of people shouting back "You can't have our freedom! The constitution says we can have guns!" and it's making it impossible to come to an agreement.

The problem with using cost as a major argument against renewable energy sources is that the price of gas has skyrocketed in the last decade. The price this year is close to three times what it was when I started driving (about 12 years ago, bigger difference for older folks I'm sure) and I don't see anything to suggest the price won't continue to go up. This is in contrast to renewable energy which, while still far more expensive than fossil fuels, are decreasing in price. So while the easy thing to say is renewable energy is too expensive, the facts actually suggest that in another decade or two it'll be the other way around even if we don't increase our efforts in studying renewable energy. I don't believe we can magically switch tomorrow, I do believe we need to start taking a switch seriously now though and begin what will be a long, slow transition period. It's going to cost more in the short term, but it'll be cheaper long term.

I'm not sure what big difference your pointing out in the way the law should be carried out, you seem to agree that you need a warrant to obtain emails, which is the same case as searching a house. As for the 4th Amendment using the term "house" specifically, it actually says "persons, houses, papers, and effects," so there shouldn't be any difference at all in the way it's interpreted for your email, unless you want to claim that because people use digital documents now instead of actual paper there are no rules.

Ah yeah I see what you mean now. I do agree!

Part of me does agree that you should encrypt sensitive data. On the other hand, if anybody else broke into and read your email, you'd never say it was your own fault for not encrypting it, nor would anyone else. Encryption can be a pain, and if you're emailing back and forth with someone who isn't computer savvy, there's a good chance they won't be able to figure it out anyway. Privacy shouldn't be an opt-in situation, you don't default to not having any because you don't go out of your way to keep it. We have laws that state you can't record a conversation that happens in public without their permission, I can't think of a time where you would have less of an expectation of privacy than a conversation in a public place, but even that isn't legal to record (State by state, check yours!) without permission.

Have you ever rented a home? By your logic, you have no expectation of privacy in a rented property or hotel room. You might be interested to know that it's already well established that (outside of television) your landlord can't even consent to a police search of your property, unless they meet the normal requirements for such consent such as if they also live there. Your email being stored on a server is like that, you're renting the space from the server owner, according to the terms they set forth when you signed up for the account. Unless those terms say they can go through your email or grant permission for others to go through your email, this is still illegal. I'll admit, laws regarding the physical world and the internet don't line up 1:1, but suggesting that there should be no privacy at all on the internet because of the way the internet works is a bit nuts.

Wish I could edit. Twelve years of reports, not eleven.

I'm curious as to your sourcing. A quick browse through the last eleven years of FOIA reports shows the backlog at the end of every year under the Obama administration has been lower then the the lowest year under the Bush administration, unless they're lying on their reports. It might also be worth noting the highest backlog under Obama was his first year in office, where Bush's first year was his lowest, indicating the trend is the opposite of what you imply. If fewer requests are being answered, then it must mean fewer have been made, because a smaller number are going unanswered. I do remember Guantanamo, and I understand the difference between a giving an order and having it followed (not that it excuses Obama entirely) but that's not the same thing I was talking about, the order I referred to seems to have been obeyed, I'd venture to guess that's one of the reasons the backlog is so much smaller now. So without excusing his administration for their wrongdoings, it seems things have been more transparent under Obama.

Well, considering Bush in his first year issued an executive order limiting the FOIA (first time it was limited since Reagan) and Obama repealed that executive order in his first month in office, I think we're still doing better. Is it perfect? No. But to say it isn't any better is just showing how unfairly biased you are. Things should be and could be better, but there's no one guy to blame here. I pointed out Bush's limiting of the FOIA but he wasn't the first guy to lie to the American people either, it's been going on for as long as the country has existed. Disagree with Obama because of the mistakes he's made, because he has made them, instead of holding him to some insanely high expectation that he would somehow magically change the way our government has worked for centuries.