I truly didn't mean it as a slight, I just found the phrasing humorous, but you make a fair point. Unfortunately years of "Pics or it didn't happen," and [Citation Needed] mentalities have created an indelible impression on my mind that everyone on the internet is a liar. Unfortunately, that's a belief that has served me well.

Could you imagine if the world worked like that? How awesome would that be? Unfortunately, their lobbying pockets are a bit deeper than yours or mine will ever be.

Watch out, we got a badass over here.

You were peer-reviewed and we as a community decided not to publish you.

Did you just say that a Sith Lord knew how to balance?

First of all, the man hasn't strayed from a solid black ensemble in 40 years. Then there's the whole argument for physical balance - if I had a nickle for every time I saw a Sith (minus Maul, his balance was impeccable) wobble, fall or hell - fail to decide to attack anddefend in a fight... Then there's that whole thing where they lean completely to one side of the force which I don't think I have to tell you...

You know what? I need to balance myself. Before I get nerd-uppity on the internet about the finer points of galactic budgets, saber fighting techniques and personal dispositions of fictional characters I'm going to go kiss my girlfriend.

Drink!... Dimissing is technically 'releasing,' right?

The thing about Arsenal is, they always try an' walk it in.

What are immigrants going to do with all that gold? ... I'll stop now. I'm sorry. :(

4.5. Misunderstand macro-economics and intoduce more supply than could possibly be consumed by the demand and cause a collapse of gold prices as a precious metal.

Yeah, but men threatening other young men with dumping in San Francisco now is mostly related to a clash over Lady Gaga and not you know, indentured servitude.

They did say the hard way. If someone wanted to learn the easy way they'd have installed Ubuntu... which I assume would have:

booted up
connected to the closest availble wifi
...cracking the password if needed
googled for stories relevant to itself
posted this witty comment
became self aware
Skynet.
updated Unity
became unusably cluttered and bloated, thereby saving the human race.
...
Profit??? I mean, that's the MS did it, right? ...getting cluttered and unusable?

And he didn't later?!? Jesus, those DWI punishments have gotten steep.

First: I'm not saying buckshot doesn't do a lot of damage, it does. Just to single targets (firing into a group tends to make them scatter so you're not getting too many shots on multiple people at once, even if they're scared kids). Having 6-8 shots, and pumping a new round in between them gives people time to scatter and hide or whatever people do. Reload time is higher as well, limiting how fast you can do anything. Having 15 shots (or whatever he had), and multiple magazines on the other hand... well... many, many more shots could be fired. This all assumes the shooter knows what they're doing of course.

Second: I think we agree but we're just wording it differently. Having access to a weapon didn't/wouldn't/couldn't change the intent. Only mental health help could do that.

Not to attempt to derail an otherwise well thought out comment but your understanding of firearms seems a bit limited... no one (sane) would ever, ever assume that you could do more damage to multiple small targets just because you're using a "12-gauge." By 12 gauge, I assume you mean something like what you see in video games because there's "high damage" up close.

Take it from me, from first hand experience: More shots, more bullets, shot faster almost always will equal more kills. There's a reason the US Military just throws lead downrange. It's effective.

Side note: don't you think that your friend would have been able to accomplish more damage with a semi-automatic rifle? A hammer isn't particularly efficent at killing.

Translated for people who don't spend time grumbling at politcal blogs: "You found someone who doesn't conform to my preconceived notions of the way things are so instead of conceding to the fact that even though it's not my ideal, it's the closest I can get so now I'm going to get haughty over the internet. What another awesome day."

Seriously though, how many people ever consider that when they say, "there's no truly left (or right) wingers anymore" that it's really just relative to them no one is on the fringe. I'm not saying it's inherently wrong... I'm just saying that even though Bernie isn't as liberal as you doesn't mean he's not the farthest left you're going to get. We live in a democratic republic, our politicians are elected by a process specifically designed to represent as homogeneous a belief system as possible.

Food for thought...