I deleted the gun post referencing the Parade/Bob Herbert articles because none of the comments pertained to the statistics I mentioned in the original post. There wasn’t even an attempt to acknowledge the casualties of gun violence, include children and innocent bystanders. Every comment pertained to a legalese interpretation of the Second Amendment and some really stupid insinuations against me personally (I should have realized what was coming when somebody said I apparently opposed doctors also because of statistics about botched/unnecessary surgeries…or something).
The line about me not caring about people’s safety as a motivation for the post was the last straw. It was apparent that all commenters merely wanted to use the post as a forum for their views. Go elsewhere to engage in that exercise.
And don’t bother submitting more comments on this subject because I’ll delete them too; I provided a forum for an intelligent dialogue, and it was abused, so we’re done.
Update 6/12/09: And in as much as I care to revisit this topic – and I can assure you that I don’t – I should say that I thought this was an interesting post.
Update 11/6/20: I have to confess that I’m not entirely sure why this post has received any recent views at all since it’s over 11 years old. I vaguely recall that I was particularly fed up with another news story of gun-related carnage, and I might have said something like “how many bodies are enough for your precious Second Amendment, or your interpretation of it,” and that made the gun nuts go crazy and swamp my original post with all kinds of idiotic, nasty spam that I noted above. I will always speak out in favor of common-sense gun laws (and if anybody doesn’t like that, too damn bad), and I think we should count our blessings at the moment that there hasn’t been anything else in the news (such as yet another mass shooting) to bring this subject front and center once more. Let us hope this remains the case for a long time.
The Liberal Doomsayer 