If some guy is open sourcing his DNA and his Slashdot ID is under, say, an arbitrary number that makes me look good, he has no cred.

Man, that's a depressing paragraph. Sounds like you're writing that in a darkened room with walls painted black, while listening to the Cure.

"Law abiding gun owners aren't the problem, the follow laws... They are the ones who sometimes stop crimes before the police arrive. They are the ones who have CCW permits and stop deranged sociopaths who are going on public murder sprees before they can kill or before they can kill as many people as they'd like to."

Do you have an example of this? I haven't done a lot of research, but it seems that when "deranged sociopaths" do go on "public murder sprees," they tend to have specific targets in mind, say Columbine high school or the Holocaust museum, rather than just random murders of people. And in most of these exceedingly rare cases of mass murder, it's been trained professionals that put an end to the incident, not some Joe Blow packing heat. Even in situations where citizens did act--the Kip Kinkle school shooting and the September 11th flight over Pennsylvania, for example--they acted, and were effective, unarmed.

I mean, sure, public murder sprees happen movies and NRA wet dreams, but not so much in real life. Hypothetical mass murders being an argument for concealed weapons is weak at best. It's specious reasoning because if someone's nutty enough to want to go shooting, they aren't likely to give a shit whether anyone out there is armed or not. You can't guard against something like that any more than you can prevent earthquakes or lightning strikes.

We'll just have to be satisfied with the Rankin/Bass production. Ho-ho, my lad!

Your paper has Paris Hilton on the front page? Dude, the National Enquirer is not a newspaper.

A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun....

Simon: My God, the sun!

Elaine: The sun? Simon, what is it?

Simon: A large, fiery ball at the center of our solar system.

Dude, a State Bar is not a professional association that an attorney may or may not join. It is a governmental entity that regulates the behavior of its licensees. The man still has his law degree; disbarment means he can no longer practice law in Florida. The same standard applies to doctors: are you going to say that a doctor found to be incompetent by his peers should still be allowed to practice medicine? Perform surgery? Prescribe drugs?

The state must reserve the right to revoke privileges it grants to anyone it initially deems qualified to do more than vote. That extends to lawyers, doctors, and day care operators; even to hunters, fishermen, and operators of motor vehicles. None of these things are a *right*, regardless of your degree of education. These things are privileges, granted by a political body whose responsibility it is to ensure that the citizens over whom it governs, and who ask for these privileges, act responsibly. If we do not, we are not only violating our agreement with that governing body, but with a basic social contract to which we all subscribe as members of a community, state, and country; and then we no longer get to do those things.

That's the power we grant our governments: not to curtail our rights to act irresponsibly, but to ensure that if we do, we have to answer for it, because that kind of behavior is not just obnoxious, but potentially dangerous.