I didn't say anything about safety, that's your straw man. Obviously, owning a gun has safety implications.

I argue simply that the right to carry is necessary to be able to, when necessary, exercise one's right to self defense.

Seriously.

Suffice it to say: (controlled) studies have genuinely shown that owning a gun increases your death rate(per anum) by about 1.6%, with about 100% of the increase taking the form of suicides and homicides by family member.

If you're worried about those outcomes, then don't own a gun.

Firearms are most effective means of self defense against most attackers. It's not hard to argue that the right to self defense is a natural right. The right to bear arms is a necessary prequisite to being able to effectively exercise one's right to self defense.

Well, the interest charges will eat up your estate, for one. They're a perfectly valid tool if all your money is in your house, but I doubt their proponents walk people through the economic implications and any alternatives.

This * 1000.

Perhaps because more and more systems are being run on open source. And because it is open source, and people can read the code.

That said, Democratic Socialism has been shown to work. ... for a few decades. In small, resource-rich countries with homegenous populations.

It's outlawed because in practice most polygamous communities also end up abusing children and treating women like slaves.

Yeah, I'm not even American, thanks.

I just can't imagine a bigger disconnect than public school teachers and computer programming.

The government can't even produce a school system that can reliably teach kids how to read and write, after 100 years of trying. You really think they're going to have any kind of success teaching kids to program?

The really rich don't make money as income, they make it as dividends and other "special" income that gets taxed at a much lower rate.

It's not a lot of people at that level, though.

It is a reality that the top 20% of wage earners pay over 80% of income taxes.

Come on, CIA. It's only OK to snoop on the other 300 million Americans. Not those special protected royals .. err .. politicians.

The difference is that almost everyone recognizes that speed limits are stupid, and enforcement is random and arbitrary and never done on days when it might actually do some good, like when the weather is bad.

If cops are going to do stupid, annoying things, I have no trouble making their life harder.

Grenada, Panama, Gulf War 1, Afghanistan, Iraq.

You may not agree with them, or much like the results, but they were clear military victories. The inability to govern afterwards or install a stable friendly regime nothwithstandnig.