Now mind you, if I wanted to run a background check on a perspective employee or renter, I pay for the background check. Not so with the throngs of paranoid white guys running to the gun stores. On the local news "gun enthusiasts" are even pissed that it may take a little longer because of the backlog.

Is this how it is in other states too?

I think I should get a tax break for not owning a gun.

This is fucked up.

Especially in elementary schools.

This is a not too an old article, but with all this talk about arming teachers (women) I thought this might shed some light the gender imbalance in our schools, which isn't a good thing either.

Chuck Gore retired from the Navy as a commander after 24 years, but he took his nautical love into his second-grade classroom at Carolina Beach Elementary School when he entered his next career as a teacher.

Students are gunner's mates, signalmen and quartermasters sailing on the U.S.S. Excel.

"Welcome aboard" is the standard greeting for visitors.

But Gore is unique not just because of his classroom style but because of his gender.

Male teachers are a rare breed, especially in elementary schools, no matter whether in New Hanover County, North Carolina or nationwide.

The concern, some education experts say, is that fewer men in the classrooms results in less diverse role models for students.


http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20110917/ARTICLES/110919769

http://www.facebook.com/dickssportinggoods

"the guns they make over there have also saved a lot of lives"

I'd like to see the numbers to back that statement up.


ILION, N.Y. -- The Remington Arms factory is at the center of this small village, straddled midway between Albany and Syracuse in the Mohawk Valley, towering over nearly every corner of the small downtown.

It may also be at the center of Friday's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

A Bushmaster .223 semi-automatic rifle was among the three powerful weapons crazed gunman Adam Lanza used in his bloody rampage.

And it was the Bushmaster -- a semi-automatic, military--style assault rifle - that Lanza fired to massacre 20 schoolchildren and six adult staffers.

Manufacture of the rifle was moved to Remington's Ilion factory in March 2011, providing a morbid link between this tight-knit town of just over 8,000 and the postcard-perfect New England community of Newtown.

Read more: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Gun-manufacturer-devastated-following-massacre-4121723.php#ixzz2FEbWmVkK

This is foreign to me - gun shots in my neighborhood would give me a stroke.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Nancy Lanza loved guns, and often took her sons to one of the shooting ranges here in the suburbs northeast of New York City, where there is an active community of gun enthusiasts, her friends said. At a local bar, she sometimes talked about her gun collection.

It was one of her guns that was apparently used to take her life on Friday. Her killer was her son Adam Lanza, 20, who then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 26 more people, 20 of them small children, before shooting himself, the authorities said.

Ms. Lanza’s fascination with guns became an important focus of attention on Saturday as investigators tried to determine what caused Mr. Lanza to carry out one of the worst massacres in the nation’s history. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/friends-of-gunmans-mother-his-first-victim-recall-her-as-generous.html?hp&_r=0

The NRA's Facebook Page Disappeared Right After The Newtown Massacre

The day before the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre the National Rifle Association celebrated a milestone: It had accumulated 1.7 million fans on Facebook. It even tweeted a joyful graphic (at right).

A day after the killings, however, the NRA's Facebook went missing in action. It cannot be found on the social network. The disappearance was first noted on the USA Carry pro-gun bulletin board.

The move occurred at the same time as the NRA's Twitter stream went silent -- and suffered a barrage of whithering tweets from critics.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-nras-facebook-page-disappeared-right-after-the-newtown-massacre-2012-12#ixzz2FARxtND8

gone into hiding again. Even the local NRA FB pages are missing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=nra+facebook&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a

so folks won't go downtown and celebrate like they did in Seattle.

4:20 Capitol bldg. today http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/12/amendment_64_signed_marijuana_john_hickenlooper.php

It was hard to find many liberal sites asking folks to call senators - mean while the right is set to derail this, just like everything else. They fear we will lose our sovereignty?????

Even when the United Nations sets out to do the right thing, it can count on a skeptical response in the U.S. That's happening now, as the Senate prepares to consider a U.N. treaty upholding the rights of people with disabilities.

The treaty is based on existing U.S. law. Its advocates argue convincingly that nothing in the U.S. would need to change as a result of the treaty's adoption. It would not affect the federal budget in any significant way. It would not raise costs in schools or workplaces.

It would, however, bring about significant changes abroad. The treaty, already ratified by more than 100 nations, seeks to establish international standards based on practices pioneered in the U.S. It provides a framework for countries to enact and enforce legislation that enables those with disabilities to live more independently, with greater dignity.

Ratifying this treaty would show that the U.S. remains committed to lead on access for the disabled. The U.S. has been leading since Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Though there was great concern at the time about the cost of implementing the ADA, the law has helped to establish that providing access to the disabled is good for society ... and good for commerce. More than 50 million Americans, and an estimated 10 percent of the world population, live with disabilities.

The wheelchair ramps, sidewalk cutouts and handicapped parking that have become part of the landscape in the U.S. are practically unknown in many parts of the world. Disabled Americans traveling overseas often encounter severe obstacles. In developing countries, children with disabilities go without even simple accommodations.http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-disability-1204-jm-20121204,0,4272312.story

Sears is now dead to me!

In the small town of Cabot, Pa., Dan Brown is the proud inventor of the Bionic Wrench, a product made solely in Pennsylvania.

His goal from day one was to make his invention in America.

This time last year, Brown's factory was buzzing, with his employees working overtime to fulfill holiday orders. With the help of Sears, Brown's company sold more than 200,000 wrenches at Christmas alone.

"Last year was a great year," Brown said. "We got ourselves on a commercial and Sears had us in stores. We were going crazy."

Brown says he agreed with Sears not to sell his bionic wrench to any other national chain such as Lowe's or Home Depot. Brown's company continued business this year but suddenly there was no deal from Sears for Christmas.

Brown had three production lines working to fill orders last year. But this year, there's only one running and he has had to lay off 30 workers. http://abcnews.go.com/US/MadeInAmerica/wrench-inventor-claims-sears-stole-idea-china/story?id=17720122#.UKZbdoYkSI0