Recent Comments

1. about 9 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Sometimes comics are too easy. As in cheap shots. It is pretty easy to say why we should vote for Bernie Sanders: the man in honest, consistent, and principled in his opposition to economic and political injustice.

   Pretending all politicians are the same, not taking sides, is a cop out. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing (Edmund Burke).

2. over 9 years ago on [Deleted]

   You are right that the NRA didn’t start out as the kind of organization it is today. It started as a gun sports group promoting safety and pleasure. In modern times though it has become an instrument of the gun manufacturers, one of the most powerful lobbies in Congress, and it gets income from many manufacturers who “donate” (and get tax breaks for doing so) so much for each gun sold, which means the NRA has a direct financial interest in blocking any reasonable measure to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Even though this position means contradicting their past support of many gun control measures.

   The NRA has successfully blocked full funding of ATF, or even federal funding to study the problem of gun violence. That is why enforcement of federal gun laws is less than perfect, meaning among other things that many gun sales have happened that shouldn’t have because the federal background check couldn’t be completed in the three day period mandated by law. (One recent mass shooter, I recall, got his gun that way.) The NRA opposes extending the waiting period and has pressed to do away with it altogether.

   Living in VT, where we have a hunting culture, I know full well that the majority of gun owners are decent people who use their guns responsibly. Some are NRA members, some are not; many who are do not feel the NRA really represents the majority of gun owners, 80 percent of whom, in Vermont , supported extending background checks to all gun sales. (We have a problem with gun trafficking in this state.) The NRA lobby blocked that effort here, just this year.

   The effectiveness of the federal law depends not only on more enforcement (we have maybe two or three agents in all of the state, which isn’t enough), but on whether or not states pass “mirror” legislation allowing their own police to enforce the federal law, and whether or not those states close the loopholes in the federal law, to apply background checks to all gun sales. States that have done so, have seen a decrease in gun violence. One state that went in the opposite direction, Missouri, saw an increase in gun violence. (AFT statistics.)

   No law is going to prevent all gun violence, but we can certainly notice that in other modern, democratic nations with stricter control of access to guns, there is nothing even close to the number of gun deaths every year in this country.

3. over 9 years ago on [Deleted]

   In many states, like mine (Vermont), you only need a background check if you buy from a licensed dealer, which means private sales such as online, or (like the latest movie theater shooting) from a pawn ship, don’t need a background check.

4. about 10 years ago on Lalo Alcaraz

   Northern Redman,Your comment appalls me. Your standard for admission would exclude the ancestors of so many Americans, going all the way back to Roanoke and the Mayflower. None of the earliest settlers came here with a way to make a living, and if not for the goodness of the indigenous people, would not have survived. Of course if your tag is meant to say you are a Native American, I can understand you might be less than thrilled about immigrants, who treated the native people horribly in return. The only way we can earn the freedom we enjoy, through the willing and unwilling sacrifices of veterans, natives and immigrants alike, is to share it with others. We are all human beings deserving of freedom and the chance to improve ourselves, even if some of us were born in a place of wretched poverty — exploited by American corporations. (Which, the way things are going, will include all of us in the USA as well.)

5. almost 11 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Substitute God for Santa…