Knave?  What class of man are you, oh "Kindler," identify yourself or off with your head!

I read this when I got into work this morning, and it was exactly what I needed.

Thanks for putting such a big grin on my face this morning.

How fortunate we are to have a Regents Taliban Law School graduate leading us.
He'll get the bitches into birkas and the homos into jail!

How many Regents "attorneys" are employed in our State Attorney's office now?

I know of one, a school board member in Henrico named Fiorelli who works for McDonnell.  He's the family values guy caught with thousands of porno pics on his county-issued laptop.  Blamed it on his son's 1hour use of the computer.

We have some really special law enforcement professionals protecting us don't we?

We will continue to vote these clowns into office because we have become a country of greedy idiots.

that men with guns freed us from a colonial power and established a government that allows ignorant pacifists to speak their mind.  One of those essential freedoms.

The irony that Robert Horan can find no reason to bring charges against the police officer who killed an unarmed man (Salvatore J. Culosi Jr.) yet he can find a way to stop people from supporting victims of illegal activity by an out of state Mayor.

Yet he is a hero to those that want to deny men and women of legally owning, and carrying guns.

And another thing: The AG, regardless of party, should uphold the law.  This AG is doing so and yet he is the demon.

Some of you are just warped

but it was not guns that established our freedoms but a participatory democracy.  I'm not freer because you might have a gun in your house.  You're freer because we established an ideal in our Constitution and our Bill of Rights which set forth numerous rights, among them your right to keep and bear arms.

As to Horan's failure to prosecute the negligent killing of Culosi, Horan is not known ever to go after police officers for anything, but the circumstances show that the killing was unintentional and due to careless weapons handling by the officer who killed Culosi.  All that case shows is that even in trained, professional hands guns can be a menace and result in the taking of innocent life.  The weighing of the costs and benefits of gun ownership I'll leave to others, but let's not pretend that they are not deadly instruments. 

As to the New York sting, I would agree with you that we should not have outside state agencies coming into this state and doing whatever they please to prosecute crimes which originate here.  They don't have jurisdiction and their actions were illegal.  New York should have contacted our state police and AG and arranged to do a joint investigation.  But then again, maybe they did attempt to do exactly that and McDonnell said no.  And if that's the case, then McDonnell deserves every bit of criticism he gets.  Whatever the case, McDonnell clearly has been given evidence now that violations are taking place.  Just what does he intend to do about it?

What I don't understand is the eagerness of you and other gun partisans to excuse the actions of the gun dealers.  The  videotapes clearly show them bypassing the law and facilitating illegal sales by allowing straw man purchases openly to take place on their premises.  You can howl all you want about the New York invasion, but until you start howling about the dealers' flagrant violations of the law you will not have any credibility. 

protects those ideals?  Think the Jews would have a Jewish state without the guns to back it up?  When we declared independance, the Brits didn't send a delegation to negotiate.  They sent armed troops.  Just like the Chineese did at Tiananmen Square.  I think we won because we were armed, the Chineese died at the foot of their Liberty Statue.

I excuse NO ILLEGAL ACTIVITY!!!  Show me the charges!  A lawsuit is NOT a criminal sharge.  Lets see it.

and existing ONLY because her citizens have guns ... oh ... and her BFF greatest super-power in the history of the world with all its guns AND ships AND missiles AND economic might AND surveillance capabilities backing her up.  It ain't M-16 toting Israeli reservists keeping Israel from being swallowed up by its neighbors. 

You appear to believe in the 5th grade version of the Revolution which consists mostly of sturdy Minutemen standing up to the greatest super-power of that time with their squirrel guns and guts, with democracy breaking out BECAUSE of their guns shortly thereafter.  Leaving aside for a moment the fact that guns were not all that plentiful in the colonies - being mostly concentrated in the hands of farmers and settlers and not in the hands of ordinary tradesmen and city folk - and that most of the battles which the colonists won (of the approximately one third they DID  win) were won either by the assistance of foreign arms or through guerilla tactics and innovative strategies or sometimes just plain luck - the idea that the only thing standing between the American public and its government's tyranny is their gun ownership is laughable.  It's a militia fantasy. 

And the Chinese example doesn't come close.  We were a bunch of colonies separated from the mother country by a vast ocean in a time of rudimentary transportation and very primitive communication.  The British Empire was expanding all over the world and we were just a piece of it.  Still, if it hadn't been for the help of the French - whom people like you revel in denigrating and dismissing their very real contributions to our independence - and the distraction to the Brits caused by their competition with both the French and the Spanish for global domination we would not have had our independence, at least not at that time. 

Re the Tiananmen Square situation, the Chinese military and government had all the power and all the might.  You really think a few handguns, rifles, and shotguns would have made a difference in a country with millions in the armed forces and all heavy weapons you can shake a stick at?  You think ALL it takes to run a revolution is to hand everyone a gun?  Not likely. 

Guns by itself did not win the war, in fact, during the revolutionary war we lost almost 3/4's of the battles we were in, we were outgunned by the British most of the time.  What won the war for us was French and Spanish involvement and a globalization of British colonial uprising and attacks.  The British could not fight a war all over the globe.

I'm not going to let that one slide, and you already know my thoughts on guns.

If it were just a matter of having more "guns," we would have won in Vietnam and now Iraq.  But that's not all there is too it, obviously.  You also need:

*Good tactics AND a coherent strategy.  As Sun Tzu said, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

*A logical connection to political ends.  As Clausewitz said, "war is nothing more than a continuation of political intercourse with the mixing in of other means."

*Morale and esprit.  The French had a MUCH larger army than the Germans at the start of World War II, yet they lost in part because they had lower morale as a nation, I'd argue.

*Intelligence.  This is absolutely crucial, and without it you're going to lose no matter how many weapons you've got.  For instance, the Israelis almost lost the 1973 Yom Kippur War because they misread the intentions and capabilities of the Arabs.  The United States and Britain gained a big advantage in WWII by breaking German and Japanese codes...

I could go on and on, but in general, the concept that whoever has the most weapons wins is simply not true. Obviously, it wasn't the case in the Revolutionary War, when the British Empire outgunned the rag-tag Americans by probably 100:1 or more.

I believe the British came over to America to begin Monarchy-Building and work to build up the far off colony of America into their image of what it should be.  What they didn't forsee was that the extremely overwhelmed colonial forces wouldn't fight on their terms.  In fact, a lot of the colonial actions became guerrilla fights where they destroyed the supplies and stole arms and munitions.  They also would attack the British forces peicemail and attack and kidnap British forces.  But the British kept charging forward, as their leader George, was hell-bent on breaking the backs of this colonial insurgency.  And as more and more countries opposed the British (as they were the Global power at the time, and a force to be reckoned with) the British had to expand their fight, and soon found themselves overpowered.  Oh history, you teach us sooo much, and yet we ignore you soo much too.

is part of what fuels the culture of violence in America. Firearms alone didn't win the war; diplomacy, the Declaration, foreign alliances, the Articles of Confederation (when they worked during the war itself), Continental Congress, and more importantly the Continental Army did. Most Americans seem to think citizen-soldier militias won the Revolution but not only did they not, American militias were notoriously poor fighters and some of the nation's greatest military defeats came at the hands of the militias (Camden, Bladensburg). And need I remind you of Shays' Rebellion, when rural Massachusetts residents took up arms against the state and came this close to marching on Boston. I don't believe the Second Amendment applies to anyone but state law enforcement agencies and military forces. It's like pointing to the Constitution and saying, "Oh right here, it says I have the right to own a car!" America's gun lust is a fatal attraction.

As for the gun giveaway, this was appaling. Not only am I pissed it happened in my hometown of Annandale, but it's also the hometown of Mary Read, a Va. Tech victim. Glorifying guns also contributes to the culture of violence. At least Kaine had enough sense to say, gee, this gun giveaway probably wasn't the best idea. There needs to be laws allowing local governments to ban firearms in public/government buildings. To all the gun nuts out there: do your guns love you? Do they hug you and kiss you? Infatuation for material possessions is never healthy, in my opinion.

are not that different from each other.  Speaking in defense of a right to self protection is not "gun love" or "glorifying guns".

2nd amendment guarantees my right to own a gun, and my gun protects me from being a victim.  I do love my life as it is the only one I have.

*Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill someone you know than they are to kill in self-defense. Kellermann, New England Journal of Medicine, 1997.

*The risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households with guns. Kellermann, New England Journal of Medicine, 1993

*The risk of suicide is five times greater in households with guns. Kellermann, New England Journal of Medicine, 1992

*Firearm assaults on family members and other intimate acquaintances are 12 times more lifely to result in death than are assaults using other weapons. Saltzman LE et al., Weapon Involvement and Injury Outcomes in Family and Intimate Assaults, 1997

In other words, owning a gun makes you and your family a lot less safe, not more.

Source: http://rileychildren...

is a different discussion than the typical gun rights topics of debate like the assault weapons ban, concealed weapons, etc. Is there free speech in America? Absolutely, but libel, slander and copyright violations are not protected. Do you have the right to defend yourself? Absolutely, but do you have the right to carry a bazooka in public? To bury landmines in your front yard? To keep a guard tiger on your front porch? Well, probably not. Don't get me wrong, I think a carpet ban on civilian ownership of firearms would be a dumb idea, but that Second Amendment part about a "well-regulated militia" gets brushed aside too often in the gun rights debate. I think when it comes to gun rights, state constitutions are the better avenue.

with any comparison.  Landmines?  please!

But seriously, I think bills being proposed in the South to allow concealed weapons in state/public parks, any public school or college, and business' property is pretty extreme, not to mention law enforcement and the people who'll be directly effected don't support these measures. Most of the supposed "gun rights" bills are only NRA you-vote-for-this-bill-and-we'll-fund-your-reelection-campaign bills. If the NRA was truly dedicated to protecting individual constitutional rights then it wouldn't endorse candidates or subsidize their campaigns -- because liberty is more important than money or partisan politics.

is about as useful as the Red Cross.  It talks a good line but it's never the right time or right case.  That's why organizations like the VCDL are important.  Most gun owners are through with the NRA.

Times are changing.

We allow people who pass background checks to handle our money, sit with our children, look after the elderly.  But a background check isn't "good enough" to own a or carry a gun?

Please stop the non-sequiturs.

Every single day I see people who've been allowed to handle money, babysit children, or take care of the elderly come through the court system for embezzlement, child abuse, and elder abuse/fraud.  Passing a background check merely means that you haven't come to the attention of the authorities, at least not enough to trigger the so-called protections of the law.  The distinction is that a cashier can only steal from her employer, a babysitter can only abuse the children within his immediate reach, and a nursing aide can only abuse or defraud the old folks within his immediate perimeter.  The potential for destruction from gun ownership by the wrong person is vastly greater.  Right now I can think of at least one person I know who is a diagnosed schizophrenic who not only has a handgun, but has a concealed carry permit for it.  Why?  Because as eccentric as he is he has never been convicted of a felony and never been involuntarily committed.  But he has been delusional.  Let's all hope he stays on his meds. 

Your worshipful and oblivious attitude toward guns shows that you will not entertain any possibility that there may be competing interests here.  I'm not saying you don't have the right to own one or to obtain a concealed carry permit, but to maintain that ownership of these incredibly dangerous instruments should not be regulated in some way, that we should not have in place a method of ensuring that only those who meet certain requirements (sanity, clean record, safety knowledge, perhaps some passing proficiency) may own them, and that those who try to circumvent these rules by participating in straw man purchases should be allowed to continue to do so is socially irresponsible. 

He sees the world in subtle shades of dark black and bright white. 

are the extremes you suggest, then yes that is the way I see things.

George Bush...is that you?