Next they're going to auction off 5,000lbs of nitrate fertilizer in Oklahoma City.

I actually kinda like his analogy. But if we keep his line of thinking for the rest of their behavior, you could say that Republican rhetoric was instilled with test cheating language and imagery.

I'm excited for the New York GOP's raffle of a 747 next week.

Or, more relevantly, one could ask the quoted Pima GOP douchespigot whether Jared Laughner could have shot 19 people that day with a revolver. The type of gun has everything to do with it. A Glock with a 33 round mag is, by definition, designed to be able to hurt a lot of people quickly. People kill people. And gun control helps to prevent people from killing a lot of people.

Fucking pricks. The sad thing is they're likely to make a lot of money from this via the sociopathic wing of the party (also, is it a wing when it comprises the majority?)

@3: But the thing is, a gun is designed to kill things, and a pistol is specifically designed to kill people. (It's not the sort of gun you'd use for hunting!)
A pencil is just designed to write. Now maybe if it was a pencil with a secret compartment for hiding a cheat sheet in...

Violent rhetoric? Tasteful and Sensitive? Here’s a Goldy classic:

I wish all Republicans would drop dead. We should all wish that all Republicans would drop dead.

"I'll remember that the next time somebody kills six people and injures seven others with a pencil."

I'll take that challenge!

Guys, I realize this may seem shocking in the great green northwest, but it really is a different culture down there with regard to guns. People in AZ simply don't shit their pants over guns. Even in (comparatively) liberal Tucson. Giffords herself is on the record as being pretty anti-gun control (though I certainly wouldn't blame her if she's since changed her mind a little.)

Which is to say, the typical Tucsonan response is going to be "oh, neat, they're raffling off a gun," not "OMG THATS THE SAME GUN THEY SHOT GABBY WITH."

@11 yes, certainly the culture is different. I've lived in the midwest and Texas. But it's pretty hard to believe that there isn't an aspect of deliberate, sneering provocation to this.

Even in NE this wouldn't be that strange, although the choice of a glock would be a bit odd. Hard to shoot deer with a glock.

Holy crap. What is wrong with these people? Besides everything, I mean.

Cue the (phallic challenged) gun nuts!

To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, "They say that guns don't kill people, people do. But I think the gun helps."

Guns don't kill people, people kill people so we should remove all regulations on guns.
Just think how much safer we would be if every house had an assault rifle and 12 handguns? All would be without trigger locks and safety's of course. No gun owner should need a gun license.

Cars don't kill people, people kill people so we should remove all regulations on cars.
Just think how much safer we would be with no seatbelts, stop signs, traffic lights, yellow lines, speed limits, etc, etc. No car owner should need to get a drivers license.

The right to own a gun that is designed to kill human beings is a unit of political power. In this day and age you would need a lot more than guns to stage a successful revolution, but it would be nearly impossible to stage a revolution without them. Having a constitutional right to own a gun that is designed to kill people is sort of like having an emergency exit in the passenger compartment of an airplane. There are almost no circumstances where it's a good idea to use it, but we'd rather have them there and not need them than not have them there in the one in a million circumstance where we might actually want to use one. Not only that, but most of us would rather try to use one, even if it's a bad idea, during certain kinds of crashes, than just have to sit there passively and die.

Gun control advocates are basically saying, "I want those emergency exits taken out because I don't trust the rest of these yahoos. Some lunatic could just open the door and kill us all at any moment." That may even be the rational argument, but it's not what most people want.

Now quick -- tell me why a fetus isn't a person in some language that boils down to something other than, "Because I said so." Because you're clearly totally rational about everything.

Stay classy Repukes

Why do you care Goldstein?

It isn't as though you'll ever live in Nevada, or vote there. This is 100% a local matter, not your business.

I mean, rational people look at Baghdad Jim McDermott or Bernie Sanders and wonder what the hell is wrong with anyone who'd vote for the commie bastards. I mean, we all watched the implosion of the Soviet Union and how China had to throw in the towel to capitalism. Apparently these gentlemen never got the word on that. But their constituents like them and vote for them so it isn't anyone elses business.

Look, everyone knows by now that you hate the 2nd Amendment, and wish it altered. So here's how you do it. Either get the Mom in Tennis Shoes to sponser the necessary amendment process or get up a citizen drive to do the same. And accept the will of the voters on the outcome, which I can predict pretty clearly. (Hint- you'll lose and badly.) Either way, put up or shut up about the right to bear arms.

First, at least they are standing by their own claims, they know that people kill people.

Second, I can kill people faster and get away with it better using any kitchen utensil, easy to make look like an accident, should we ban forks and butter knives to? Not to mention it's REALLY easy to kill someone with bleach and hydrogen peroxide, go ahead, mix the two in your house, dare you to. There's the alternative bleach and ammonia, but anyone who doesn't have HO is pretty unprepared and most people don't stock ammonia anymore. Should we ban all cleaners? Worse, these easy to use killing methods are available everywhere, online and in school chemistry books. Now in a heated battle, a gun would be a nifty way to go, but if everyone else was packing, you'd be stupid to even draw it.

"They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire, I disagree, it's a weapon you only have to fire once."

@19 A person could be removed from his or her current environment and placed in an equal or better environment and possibly thrive, but definitely survive. A fetus cannot - up to 24 weeks, and that's iffy.

Read this and tell me .... which guns are killing the most? http://www.nij.gov/nij/topics/crime/gun-… So, if illegal ones are the ones doing the killing, how do they get them? http://www.nij.gov/nij/topics/crime/gun-… Now the total and complete irony: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/may… Which area had the best decline?

That's No Country for Old Men.

The political partisanship bantering is stupid, as is usually my point in matters like this, and that's all this is. It's "they say yes and we say no" bullshit, it's not about safety, the good of humanity, or even what's right or wrong, it's about pushing your ideology. Free and clear gun ownership is bad, and oddly enough even the Republicans are not pushing for that, they want responsible gun ownership. I have to side with the Republicans on this 100% because the Democrats who do oppose gun ownership (luckily becoming a minority quickly) are actually twisting the facts and putting words into the Republican's mouth, enemy of mine enemy is mine friend, and the one thing that tells me someone is wrong, is when they outright lie knowing the truth. Not knowing the truth would be one thing, it would just mean more education is needed, but as long as this debate has gone on, it's easy to see who is lying now. In the infamous words of Captain Jack Sparrow, "I have to agree with, and I can't believe I'm even saying this, the Republicans" ... modified for context of course.

PS: Yes, I have watched way too many movies more than once.

All the 2nd Amendment defenders (and detractors) are being, as usual, completely reactionary. The purpose of this auction is not to promote gun rights, it's to celebrate the return of political violence as a viable tool of right-wing politics. The ethos and modus operandi of the Tea Party is the implied threat of political violence. Arguments about the 2nd amendment are a distraction.

Goldy, I love your rage. LOVE IT.

It's true. The gun isn't responsible. The lack of social services which left Jared Loughner untreated and free is.

I'm beginning to understand the desire for True Believers to collect splinters from the True Cross. It's like Nancy and Jackie and Mary Todd cherishing fragments from the bullets that blew holes in their husbands. How comforting such relics must be for the survivors. Maybe the winner of the Glock auction will present it to Gaby as a keepsake, presuming she has the cognition to realize the Glock has forever diminished the quality of her life.

Blues @21,

Either way, put up or shut up about the right to bear arms.

But the 1st Amendment says that I have the right not to shut up about the right to bear arms. Why do you hate the Constitution?

Gahh. It's not about abortion either, you dumbasses. It's about the legitimization of political violence by the far right. Pay fucking attention.

@33: So once we have the technology to safely and affordably remove a fetus from a woman's uterus and grow it to term in an artificial womb, THEN you can start agitating for abortion bans. I would be fine with that.

@35 Excellent response; I agree completely.

I suppose I should have specified that I meant humans who live "without medical intervention" could be moved "without medical intervention" and continue to live "without medical intervention"... but any argument I could have made could be picked apart.

@22,

The problem here isn't the right to bear arms, it's the political statement, snidely, of the choice of the same type of handgun used for an assassination attempt on the sitting congressional representative. Who, by the way, is from another party.

Just imagine if the democratic party had a raffle for the same type of handgun as the one used to maim Jim Brady. Oh, that's right, you can't because it would be in such poor taste. This isn't about what is legal, it's about what is correct. At the least the Republicans could've considered the feelings of Christina Taylor Green's parents, or any of the other victims.

Peace.

@35
You wrote: A fetus unlucky enough to be exist today is inhuman trash to be killed and disposed of at a whim without remorse or recourse but a medical advance tomorrow makes that same fetus a member of the Human Race?

Although the abortion argument is really a bit (quite a bit) off topic, I'll engage you for just a moment.

You're invoking a favorite bête noire of the anti-choice movement: the pregnant woman who is so shallow, self-absorbed and fickle that she decides to abort a fetus "at a whim without remorse or recourse." As though a woman might wake up one morning and say "I'm feeling kind of blah today. I think I'll treat myself to a pedicure and an abortion." Do you really think that there are women who abort "at a whim without remorse"? In my experience, women who even think about abortion do so with intense and careful consideration, both of their current lives and their future lives, with and without a child.

And even assuming the whimsical women you imagine do, in fact, exist, do you really want them raising babies?

Really?

Sorry. That should have been @38. Sorry, Venomlash.

@32- Seattleblues said he knows Obama has contempt for the Constitution, he agrees with Obama about the Constitution, therefore he has admitted openly that he hates it.

@38: Someone's a little slow on the uptake.
An embryo or fetus is not yet a human being, but it has the potential to become a human being, giving it some nonzero amount of worth. What worth an embryo or fetus has is not enough to justify forcing a woman to carry it to term, so a woman's unfettered access to abortion is a necessary evil in today's world. However, if someday allowing an embryo or fetus to develop into a person no longer consigns a pregnant woman to bodily servitude, there is no immediate reason to destroy the embryo or fetus.
Do you get it now, or are you every bit as thick as you have so far led me to believe?

Murder minus gun equals attempted murder.

Seriously, is it possible to imagine that the Tucson shooter could have done half as much damage as he did if he hadn't had a gun? If he'd had a knife, he could have stabbed Giffords, but it's unlikely anyone else would have been harmed. So yes - the gun is responsible.

Lets see...

In 1865 a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States ..

In 1881 a left wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield, President of the United States who later died from the wound.

In 1963 a radical left wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy, President of the United States.

In 1975 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at Gerald Ford, President of the United States . . .

In 1983 a registered Democrat shot and wounded Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.

In 1984 James Hubert, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 22 people in a McDonalds restaurant.

In 1986 Patrick Sherrill, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 15 people in an Oklahoma post office.

In 1990 James Pough, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office.

In 1991 George Hennard, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 23 people in a Luby’s cafeteria.

In 1995 James Daniel Simpson, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory.

In 1999 Larry Asbrook, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 8 people at a church service.

In 2001 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at the White House in a failed attempt to kill George W. Bush, President of the US.

In 2003 Douglas Williams, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.

In 2007 a registered Democrat named Seung – Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people in Virginia Tech.

In 2010 a mentally ill registered Democrat named Jared Lee Loughner, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.

In 2011 a registered Democrat named James Holmes, went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.

In 2012 Andrew Engeldinger, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis.

In 2013 a registered Democrat named Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people, mostly children, in a school.

As recently as Sept 2013, an angry Democrat shot 12 at a Navy ship yard.

One could go on, but you get the point, even if the media does not. Clearly, there is a problem with Democrats and guns. Not one NRA member, Tea Party member, nor Republican conservative was involved in these shootings and murders.

ONLY SOLUTION: It should be illegal for Democrats to own guns.