Can anyone make a coherent argument that guns are LESS dangerous than cars? i doubt it...

[rrneck]

36. Who?

Who are the suicides? Who are the homicides? Who are the justifiable homicides?

Any law reduces civil liberty. It's the price we pay for a civilized society. How would you craft a law denying a gun to the wrong people, and allowing the right people to have one?

If you put a thousand people in a room and told them that three of them would be assaulted, raped, mugged or murdered next week, five hundred of them would go out and buy a gun tomorrow. Will they need those guns? No. But they'll buy them anyway because we don't know who will need them.

Statistics are fine for telling us what has already happened, but they are almost worthless for an individual trying to decide what's safe and what's not. Especially when the stakes are life and death.

Enforcing laws costs money. Police officers don't work for free. Courts aren't run by charities. And political capital is what a politician spends to get a law enacted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_capital
A politician gains political capital by winning elections, pursuing policies that have public support, achieving success with initiatives, and performing favors for other politicians.

Political capital must be spent to be useful, and will generally expire by the end of a politician's term in office. In addition, it can be wasted, typically by failed attempts to promote unpopular policies that are not central to a politician's agenda. American President George W. Bush claimed to have earned "political capital" after the 2004 elections.[1]

Political capital is highest in the "honeymoon period" of a presidency as in the United States, where the president is newly elected and the people still support the person they voted for. Along with the president's popularity are those who ride on the "coattails", congressional representatives of the president's party that are elected alongside the president. This support in congress enables the president to better use his honeymoon period and political capital to pass his ideal legislation.

If you want a particular piece of legislation, by all means lobby for it. But it better work. The right would like nothing better than the president to burn as much political capital as possible on culture wars and gun laws that piss off half the population. That's how the 1% got to be the 1%.