19th Level

Since this post has to do with the 2nd Amendment, something that generates a lot of passion, I'll begin with a few points: The Founding Fathers were not a monolithic block. As a result it's easy for people, including me, to pick and choose from their statements to defend a particular viewpoint. In the United States, it is the Supreme Court which determines the Constitutionality of a law. The Roberts Court has determined the 2nd Amendment Guarantees an individual right to own a firearm. There is a history of Supreme Court decisions that many have regarded as "wrong". Many of the same people, for example, who support the Supreme Court decision on individual gun rights disagree with its decision on the Affordable Care Act, Corporations having a right to speech, Same Sex Marriage, Roe v. Wade, etc. Similarly the Supreme Court in its history has endorsed slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford and racial segregation with Plessy v. Ferguson. Opponents of "wrong...

Taking a break from geeky topics to reflect on the Sandy Hook School killings. Feel free to move on to more pleasant topics in my blog such as Cthulhu, Stephen King, Dungeons & Dragons, and the like. Reflecting on the massacre in Connecticut... I'm a proud Massachusetts boy now and always consider myself to be "from" Brooklyn. But the fact is I spent most of my childhood in Connecticut, maybe half an hour or so from Sandy Hook. I'm married to a school teacher. My brother's wife is a teacher. My mother is one. And I find myself writing the words "massacre in Connecticut". I know there's talk as to how we shouldn't politicize the issue. But all I can think of are nearly thirty dead people, the majority of them children. Children! I read of a teacher who saved her entire class with her own life. My own wife Patty tells me that she thinks as a teacher that'd be instinctive. I don't want to read about another massacre of kids. I don...