Let us hope the administration doesn’t try to implement a nationwide energy policy. I suspect they can find a way for us to lose knowledge of fire. — Michael Z. Williamson, on FaceBook

“I am.” – Stephen, when replying to a rather rude woman who said that he looked “like one of those ultra-conservative militant militia types that want to destroy our government.”

There’s two kinds of people in the world, the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves. – From Without Remorse, by Tom Clancy, April 27, 1947 – October 1, 2013

It isn’t the weapon that’s the dangerous part of any equation.  It’s the person holding it.

I am not dangerous because I carry a gun.  Not to the standard, every-day, law-abiding schmuck.

I am dangerous to those who think that I am prey.  Because I am not, and have never been.

–Heroditus Huxley, “It’s Not The Weapon”

 

I think my way of saying it is “I may not always have my gun, but I am never unarmed”, or “I’m a peaceful man, but if you raise a hand to me or mine, I will take off your whole arm”.

Because like it or not, the folks spraying our cities with bullets are not NRA members or legal gun owners. And despite the tendency to tie it all together, they have nothing to do with the Adam Lanzas of the world. — LZ Granderson, in his CNN opinion piece “Gun Control Is Not The Answer“

Read the whole thing.

In a few hundred words, Mr. Granderson makes the point that I and others have used gallons of ink to make.  The problem is not the implement; the problem is the person wielding it.  But since people problems are thornier, the easier path of attacking lumps of metal and plastic, along with those who peacefully own and use them, is taken.

How we find a solution to the people problem is going to be harder than anyone can imagine.  It will require looking at how people act, how they raise their children, and how we choose to spend our national resources, and honestly looking at all of us and saying “you have erred, and you need to do better”.  Until we do this, violence, no matter how it happens, will continue to be a plague on our society.

Government is like chemotherapy – you *really* don’t want any more than absolutely necessary.  — Gay Cynic on Twitter

When the need arises — and it does — you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don’t farm it out — that doesn’t make it nicer, it makes it worse. — Robert Heinlein, “Time Enough for Love”

The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind. — H.P. Lovecraft, August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937

Tomorrow, July 16, 2016, on the The View: A Mother’s Loss, A Mother’s Courage.

We’ll speak with four moms who lost children in the inexplicable epidemics of diphtheria, measles, and whooping cough that began sweeping America three years ago. What can we learn from their stories?

Popehat, on Facebook, commenting on a mass murderer being selected to be on some vapid day-time television dreck.

The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors. — Thomas Jefferson

Folks, that pretty much sums up the reason for our Revolution, and my own political views.