Reply #40: Well, VM, this may be the first time we've ever "talked"

[villager]

...so that's something.

Yes, online lends itself to ripping folks a new one. I've done it myself.

But more and more, over gun issues, it seems utterly futile, and a kind of enmeshment.

I get pissed off, after each massacre -- and sorry, but they're coming more and more frequently, and the proliferation of guns isn't, uh, helping matters in that regard -- the "gun nuts" (to riff of your car nut phrase) rush to the board, showing not the least bit of empathy for the victims,, but instead caterwauling about "Gun, How Great Thou Art!," and using recycled NRA snark to imagine the Founding Fathers meant for psychopaths to have unchecked access to military-style weaponry at every backwater gun show.

Sorry. They didn't. And it is entirely reasonable for a society to impose reasonable limits on the proliferation of such weapons.

My thinking that doesn't mean I believe you are innately a bad person -- so quit being so goddamn defensive! But I am going to disagree with you on these policy issues.

Because, no, I don't want "car nuts" making transportation policy, quite frankly. Bichin' late 60's/early 70's V8s may be cool in their way, but you know, society can't always subsidize the road building, and the lack of alternative fuels and the absence of mass transit to please the car nuts.

And frankly, the same analogy applies here.

I know you disagree. But no name-calling is required for that disagreement.