Calax

Politically they're probably doing the "Come out with the most extreme bill, to give yourself negotiation space" tactic. One of the things mentioned was a forgrip on weapons being banned, and I totally agree that's a bit overkill. However something like the "easily modified" situation would end up being way to open ended to be worth much because lawyers could easily make any action seem complicated. As to the boar, I admit a .22 is probably a bit small, but you certainly don't need an AK or M4 to actually pull it off. Hell, the guys on moonshiners did it with a simple rifle (hog size may be smaller than the ones you're talking about). As to the security guards: I think you're missing one important point about the "security guards at schools" thing. If the Feds were to put into law the mandate that they be stationed in every single school, where do you think the bill would end up being charged? Right now school districts are floundering because of budget cuts (education is a big part of any budget, but doesn't have concrete results), and they'd have to pay the salaries for these security guards to be at the school. Meaning less money for school supplies, and/or more negotiations with the unions. Also this doesn't cover situations like Aurora Colorado, or the Clackamas Town Center shootings, as they weren't at a school. Increased background checks and tighter regulation of more powerful firearms would seriously curtail the amount of guns sold. I know that the pro-guns crowd is declaring that all it'd do is make law abiding citizens unable to defend themselves (which is a total fallacy), but the reality is that the guns are so prevalent because they're legal. Once something becomes illegal it becomes much harder to get due to expenses attached to the illegal arms trade, and the reduced numbers of guns around (as manufactures would no longer produce things like the Bushmaster .223). Basically, Capitalism would drastically reduce the number of guns around once the regulations hit.

I may have it backwards then... although when I see "democratic republic" I always think of "Communist" states.

There are few signs as tell tale that someone is brainwashed or uninformed than someone using that term. Just to be clear, the US is a democratic republic. Simply stating that the United States is a representative republic is ambiguous, since a country can be a representative republic but not hold any sort of election for the representatives. Democracy is straight up defined as: A country does not need to be a direct democracy in order to be classified as a democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_democracy#Types_of_democracy The US is both a democracy and a republic. The terms are not mutually exclusive. I think the technical term is a "Republican Democracy".

You must live somewhere very urban... Not everyone does. For a lot of citizens of this country the backyard can still very much kill them. In Texas, it's not hard for this to show up in your back yard. They're not protected, in fact, they're an invasive and destructive species. They're also extremely dangerous... They were introduced with settlers in the 1500's. (Some believe descended from Columbus' stock as a few went on the record as missing.) 300lbs with tusks and not shy about poking around garbage cans. Yeah, but how many deaths have occured in the past 12 months from those boars? That's my point. For the most part, a backyard is much more easily protected and if something waddles in, you call the authorities and they come out and kill it/deal with it. And it's not like you need an M4 to kill it, a 22 rifle is good enough (or a 12 guage). I live in friggin Iowa, hunting is kinda big here. I don't begrudge my friends their rifles and pistols, but I do think that an AK-47 is kind of overkill. Well, those same gangsters aren't exactly going to follow the rules about killing either are they? To steal Jon Stewarts joke "If the logic is 'those who break the law won't follow the rule, so we shouldn't enact it', why not just get rid of this 'thou shalt not kill' thing?" And the idea is that if you ban larger mag's, you'll slowly see the amount of mag's larger than the legal amount start disappearing because it's much easier to attain a "legal" magazine than a bigger one. And how does it put the "legal" citizen at a disadvantage? He has an Assault rifle, so he's probably gonna be popping that sucker off like crazy and having 0 accuracy, while you just shoot him properly with your 38 saturday special or whatever. You seem to act as if there's some sort of equity required in a gunfight for both sides to have an equal chance of winning. As far as I can tell, your average home invasion doesn't include kevlar body armor and is NEVER outside the effective range of a shotgun. So a gangster just shows up and you have about the same chance as him at hitting/killing the guy. He just has a LOT more recoil to deal with, and drains his magazine much faster.

You really did give me pause and make me think about it; interpretations of law, legal experts and professors. I was really curious as to whether or not it might not mean what we have come to understand it to mean. I wasn't quite sure what to think until I considered the times. I cannot imagine colonial leaders would have ever expected early Americans to enter or live on the frontier unarmed. And, there are still places in this country where it is dangerous to go unarmed. (If you've ever seen a Grizzly Bear in real life, you know what I'm talking about.) There are places now where it can take police an hour to get to you, what then? When I think about all the pictures of paintings I've seen from Colonial America, men carrying arms appeared to be a common and ordinary occurrence. Arms were a part of every day life to these people and to think they would specifically pencil in a law to state, "You have the right to bear arms so long as you're part of, and only if you're a part of, an approved militia." Such is nonsensical to me in the context of the place and time that was Colonial America. Ah, but here is the kicker. Right now you are unlikely to have that Bear, or any bobcats come smacking at your front door. In colonial times, your back yard could kill you. Now? Not so much unless you live a very violent life to begin with. As to the Militia thing, it wasn't that they weren't allowed to have arms if they weren't part of the Milita, it was that they were forced to be a part of the militia as part of their normal life. Similar to how American Citizens are signed up for the draft and are a part of the social security program no matter what. Therefor there was nobody who would fall outside the "part of a militia" requirement to own a weapon. See, this is where you're ignoring what the other side is saying. Nobody I've seen has proposed just outright banning guns. The VP owns and loves him some shotguns, and all they are doing is limiting how much killing power a single person can own/use at any one time. They're mainly attempting to push through the background checks thing, and limit the amount of firepower that can be taken anywhere at any given time.

I say dragonfight!

There are few signs as tell tale that someone is brainwashed or uninformed than someone using that term.

I think, under your definition, any government would be labeled "Tyrannical", except for an anarchic one. If we want to play a bit of semantics, Governments are the worlds largest land lords, and we're all just tenants on their land. We want to build a house, but we have to get permission from the owner. If we don't respect that boundary, then they wouldn't put their weight behind the claims of ownership we have for our property and equipment. After all, one guy saying "This is mine!" has hardly ever been a compelling argument for property ownership. Having the government endorse that claim is what realistically makes it stick (or the strength to defend it against ALL comers). The point of Tyranny, to me, is when the government begins to actively harm it's citizens. And I don't mean harm their sense of entitlement, I mean "Syrian boss shooting up his citizens because they won't get in line" harm. Our government has slowly been approaching that (although it appears to have backed off after some of the more spectacular Occupy Wall Street breakups), but it's never started shooting it's own people... on purpose.

As I've said before (and talked Alan's ear off about at various points) I personally think that a player romance option showing up with a kid (for me it's Liara because of the "I'm BI!" option and the fact you can theoretically write through not-having-romance to fill out all story checkboxes) would be one HELL of a way to slap the player with consequences. I'd certainly get noticed by everyone, and I think it'd end up causing a lot of players to react differently to situations. But then I've also got my dark business heart which crafted the above business plan for ME3 so *shrugs*

Try not to preface an opinion with the term fact. Handguns get their share of ire too. If you're curious why they are talking about the semi-automatic, large magazine rifles, it's probably because they have the unfortunate distinction of being used in the mass shootings recently. I mistakenly made that plural... but if you go read that report, the fact is that handguns were used more often in mass shootings, according to the government's own study. Except that hand guns are explicitly protected under the supreme court. As Scalia wrote, and I pointed out here, handguns are protected as being easily kept weapons of home and self defense. HOWEVER, Hunting rifles, and anything larger is not covered due to it's size and design. Most standard rifles are covered because hunting is kind of a "thing" and you can't fire to many bullets at the same time with one. One of the reasons assault rifles are being targeted is because of the sheer firepower you find in them. 30 rounds out of the end of a rifle in 28 seconds. And the AK47/M16 ripoffs that are out there are easily modded to be fully automatic (although the kickback is a bitch to deal with), which you can't do to easily with a hunting rifle.

No no no... you don't do real money microtransactions. You make it a points system that NEEEVER quite manages to match up to a specific dollar value. 750 points for 5 bucks with 600 points being a specific choice unlock. Then you also lock the romances behind money, but if they buy the romances they only get the dialogue. The sex scene is tucked away for another few bucks, otherwise players are just left at "I wub you!" "I wub YOU!" *kissy face* and a fade to black. And Tali would be the most expensive romance/sex scene because she's got such a dedicated fanbase.

... Operation Acoustic Wals?

This sounds like the next version of this thread.

Suikoden V again... God I love this game, but I always forget how drawn out the prologue is (runs about 5 hours... it has to set a LOOOOOT of stuff up)

I don't know why, but the last line of this yahoo news item actually made me kind of... happy in a strange way http://news.yahoo.com/florida-man-accused-fraud-name-change-act-love-224309320.html

... not gonna lie, the "mouth" of that mask looks like it belongs between a womans legs.

Right now the comp is running about 40-50C for hte cores, 50-65C in the GPU and the three case temps are fairly low. Although I am airing out my room a bit with 30F degree weather outside. My room basically has no air movement in it because of the fact it's an addition to the apt. It's the warmest in our apartment and doesn't really have any way to get air back to my computer so the place just starts to heat up. Slow ass day at work because of ice on the ground. Most of it was gone by 2 but nobody went out so we basiucally spent all days finding ways to yell at people to do work. I did get a laugh when the 15 y/o showed up having been spraytanned orange.

Speedfan has that built in, I just don't know the temps I should have it at so I just left it at default (and raised the gpu a bit for temp)

Sorting out my new computer slowly. I think it's been overheating but I'm not sure. I didn't know how to figure out how to change the fans, so I installed "Speedfan" and set it so that it'll automatically configure my fans for me, but I don't know like ANY variables here.

And I'm sure at 15 you'd TOOOOOOTALLY ignore the advances of a hot person who's older than you. Tooooootally.

I hear people talk about this bias a lot, and yes in some situations there is a bias towards women. In general though, as a 30 year old white male, it doesn't take much for me to recognize how many extra privileges I get simply because of being born a white male. Well my point was that while a woman gets to choose if she wants to keep the kid or not after the accident happened, the guy's just screwed. If he wants to keep the kid while the woman wants the abortion? He doesn't get to have any recourse for his situation. And the opposite obviously happens given how much we hear about it. It also doesn't help that the second that the accident happens, if the girl decides "I'm gonna keep it" the entirety of society turns and glares at the guy as if he's the only person who ever did anything wrong in the situation. As to the SLO v Nathan J. case. http://law.justia.com/cases/california/caapp4th/50/842.html with probably the most relevant parts being:

To be fair, there is, sexually, a bias against the guys. I'm not going to say that men are some horribly oppressed minority or something stupid like that, however in terms of birth control failures and accidental pregnancies and divorces, there isn't that much help for the guys. If the woman wants an abortion, it's her body and she can do with it what she wants. If the guy doesn't want to pay for the kid, or whatever, well, you stuck your **** in it, you're paying for the consequences! And in courts are highly bias towards the women in terms of custody. Dad could be an upstanding citizen with a fantastic job and a good house and stable relationships, while mom is drinking booze every other night and can barely maintain a 3 bedroom apartment, but mom will get the kids because hey, she's the mom.

Hah, right. Those rights are part of the relic group yeah?

It's kinda funny, but they clean up the entire "invasion" thing in about 20 seconds in MW3. Also, Where did darque pop back up from?

So you're saying that the 1st amendement has been somehow inextricably linked to a "reconstruction" amendment because of the fact that it puts into law what had already been practice for anglo-americans at the time (that white people were citizens simply because they were born here, while african americans weren't because they were slaves)? And this is because of the current immigration issues to america? As to infringement, we've gone over this. Your "rights to bare arms" are technically already infringed and have been since things such as bazookas and flamethrowers were not allowed to be used in civilian hands becuase of just how dangerous they were. They are technically still "arms" in the terms of what a "well regulated militia" would end up having in a military context. Although I am unsure of just how much given that militias in the 1700's didn't exactly have cannons carting around with them. Of course, then you can go back to Militia. With Militia, according to the American Heritage Dictionary being "an army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers or the whole body of physically fit citizens eligible by law for military service to call for in times of emergancy." And to steal wiki's list (shut up gromnir) And while you may declare that you and your buds from down the street should be considered a militia, you don't have a clear chain of command, and wouldn't come, as a militia, to the military in a time of emergency. You'd instead just be flat out drafted and turned into a proper military soldier. Sure "well regulated" may have changed it's meaning over the histories, but so has "militia". In the times of the founders, a Militia was basically the current US Army Reserve/US National Guard. You show up for a few weeks a year to sort out drills and practice shooting, as well as retain a military commission based on that service (Daniel Boone, for example, was a Colonel in the Kentucky Militia). No neighborhood watch group, or gun club, or whatever you want to say, can claim that their militia will have carry over into the US military in terms of rank. Also, from the same guys who made the constitution you have the First and Second Militia Act(s) of 1792, The first simply saying that the President could call up the militias to active service, the second saying http://www.constitution.org/mil/mil_act_1792.htm So, the 2nd amendment basically says that the soldiers in the Reserve or National Guard have a non-infringed right to bare arms, but the average Joe doesn't. And the Militia act of 1903 established the National Guard to replace the militias constructed under this and previous systems.