There is a very good reason for a ban. It will obviously fail to prevent development and manufacture. What a ban would realistically prevent is tactical deployment against a lesser than existential threat.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

-John Adams

I am not sure it really means what you were going for though.

There are also employers who are actively looking for a defendable reason why they should instead hire some comparably qualified oppressed minority, or bring in someone from overseas.

That last sentence that you quoted was certainly improperly worded on my part. I meant that a gun aids in deterring intervention and stopping those who intervene, which is the point of most of your reply and was not meant to trivialize anyone's sacrifice.

My point was that this is event in particular, even with 9 adults and 18 children, when compared to typical mass shootings among peers, had an outcome that was less facilitated by firearms than those other massacres. I did not say that it wasn't a factor, just that it was not appropriate to flag this event as being the one in particular that finally highlights the stupidity of U.S. gun practices.

Focusing on the guns instead of the whole event makes it sound as if there was a guy who sincerely wanted to murder his mother and a bunch of children, did not care about the consequences, and everything was just fine until he found a gun.

Why? It was a grown man in a room with few small exits filled with small children. Anything from history that has ever been called a weapon, baseball bats included, would have resulted in comparable devastation. A gun is just a convenience. Someone with the desire to murder a roomful of children and complete personal removal from the consequences is the problem.

I will concede that the gun may have aided in deterring and stopping other adults from intervening, but that is less significant in this case than in any other mass shooting that I have heard of, considering the high ratio of potential victims to people physically comparable to the shooter.

To call out this one in particular as the event that screams "IT'S THE GUNS" blatantly disregards the more substantial problems.

I am still early on my first child, a daughter, but I wouldn't think a baby boy would be any worse on that front. When my daughter pees at the wrong time during a change, she pees all over herself, every time. I have tile floors and a Swiffer. Peeing nearby would certainly be an improvement.

Replace "economic" with "academic" and water down the list of indefensible practices; you have our modern college admission policies, and the same people furious over studies like these advocate the hell out of practices like that.

It probably also depends on his blood type.

It makes much more sense, and is perfectly compatible with the rest of the plot, if you replace his period of muteness with a delay to learn the language. I have a suspicion this is what was originally intended but they did not want subtitles on the whole film.

Have you seen "Hancock"? It's not too far from what you describe.

The lower reciever, for the AR-15, is the only part that bears the serial number. It is "the gun" as far as regulation is concerned. All other parts can be legally purchased anonymously . That is why this is significant.

One of the two who subdued the Tucson shooter was armed, but correctly judged it unnecessary to use his weapon when he got close to the shooter. Simply being armed though, probably played a big role in deciding whether to move toward or away from the sound of spontaneous gunfire. Six were killed.

Most gun massacres in the U.S., such as at Virginia Tech (where 33 were killed) happen in areas where citizens are not legally permitted to be armed. I think that is the point: you can't play god when you are walking among peers.

It benefits everyone for your neighbor's children to grow up to be useful people. Until our society becomes comfortable with people starving to death in the streets, it is much cheaper to educate a child than sustain a useless adult with public resources.

Even if we get comfortable with people starving in the street, they are not just going to starve to death peacefully. Desperate people are understandably capable of committing all sorts of nastiness to preserve their lives, and then you have to pay to incarcerate them.

It's a bit hyperbolic, but the point is that your life is significantly better because you have educated civilized neighbors, and it is not too absurd to expect you to help pay for it.

It is probably meant as a joke but it is still a good point. Educated people wield power disproportionately in other ways though. Wouldn't you prefer, for example, that engineers for the defense industry have a solid understanding of contemporary history, regardless of whether or not they are sufficiently interested or motivated to study it on their own time?

What is the quote from Jurrassic Park about being too concerned with whether or not you could to stop and think about whether or not you should?

As a scientific programmer, I find it amazing that any significant portion of people in serious IT place no value on math higher than and including trigonometry. Is this actually the case?

And as a citizen in a democracy, I find it amazing and frightening that a significant portion of people who actually vote see no value in general education courses. When I was a kid in the 90's, we used to call someone a "tool" as an insult.