Publius

So, the socialists love British socialized health care and the British ban on guns. So let's see what that means in reality eh? In 2010: UK: 157275 cancer deaths UK cancer death rate: .2489% US: 569490 cancer deaths US cancer death rate: .1844% The US has a dramatically lower death rate from cancer, because the US (somewhat) private health care system does a better job of treating, managing, and curing cancer than does the British system. If the UK had America's superior cancer death rate, that is 40,734 more Britons who would have survived 2010. That's a 0.06% rate of death by socialized medicine. Compare to the roughly 16,000 Americans who were murdered by a firearm - a 0.005% chance. So, the British are 10 times more likely to die of socialized medicine, than an American is of a gunshot. http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@nho/documents/document/acspc-024113.pdf http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/mortality/uk-cancer-mortal...

Megan, you overlooked one obvious thing that could help.  More regular, sane, well-adjusted people who are well trained in the use of firearms should be allowed to carry them concealed, in public. The reason the shooters pick malls, schools, restaurants and the like is that they know noone in any of these places will offer them any resistance. Because we have in our "wisdom" banned guns from these places - even by non-crazies. So when crazy shows up to a school there is *no way to stop it*. The meme is "Noone has ever committed a mass murder at a gun show." But it's truth. These shooters are, fundamentally, cowards. They want easy victims, and as you say, a sense of power. So they're going to go to places where we have banned guns and know they will get to exercise that power without resistance. Places that might resist won't give them the sense of power. The obvious solution you overlook, is to encourage, educate, and allow more people to defend thems...

Whoa. Occasionally we get through to people, even if only partially: "This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire." @Nicholas D Kristof, this is because you leftists have had poverty wrong all along. Poverty is the state of nature. In our nation, poverty is not victimhood. Poverty is not a state you are kept in by a feudal lord. Poverty is, merely, the lack of wealth-producing and wealth-building activity. To create and build wealth, certain values are required: industriousness, foresight, independence, integrity, honesty, the ability to consider the values of other so that you can deal with them by trade, and above all: rationality, the ability to solve problems, because solving problems is what creates value. All humans are born into poverty. We are all born with n...