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[smjjames]

I wonder when there will be more dropouts, I can't imagine the really low polling people like Pataki and Grahan hanging on for much longer.

Though Gilmore seems content with running on fumes, what with that protest/troll/whatever-hes-trying-to-achieve-or-prove campaign of his.

[RedKing]

I forget...which party is Gilmore in again? 


Interesting schism forming in the GOP response to the Paris attacks. The question has come up, "Would you support banning gun purchases by individuals on the Federal terrorism watchlist?"

Seems a no-brainer, right? WRONG.

Once again, Trump has managed to leave Carson (and other candidates) in a hell of a bind. If they say "yes", there will be howls of outrage from the NRA and militia crowds. If they say "no", then they look like they value gun fetishists over homeland safety. Trump might take some flak for this from the gun lobby, but in general it seems like a common sense thing to me.

(Yes, I'm aware that there's the potential to then abuse the terrorism watchlist against right-wingers to disarm them....but I'm actually okay with that).

Christie tries to thread the needle with his answer and gets stuck right in it. "Well, I thought it was a good enough idea for New Jersey, but I'm opposed to it on the Federal level." Which is the worst of both worlds. "Oh, I can't buy an AR-15 in New Jersey? I'll just go over to Pennsylvania and grab one then."

[Shadowlord]

At first I thought you meant Happy Gilmore. Then I realized you must mean Jim Gilmore. Then I was like "Wait, Jim Gilmore is running?"

Carson's usually sounds batshit crazy, but in this case I think he might be right, unless he (and I) are conflating different unrelated lists. From what I've read there's no due process involved in getting on a watch list and it can happen just from having a similar name to a terrorist.
Oh, and is it fair that terrorists can acquire automatic rifles on the black market and we can't acquire legal ones to protect ourselves from them with? Although that's probably a bad idea.

According to the CDC, in 2013, there were 11,208 homicides by firearms in the USA in 2013, along with 21,175 suicides by firearm (total 32,383 firearm deaths, I assume nothing is counted in both categories), major cardiovascular disease killed 796,494 people in the US in 2013, and malignant neoplasms (e.g. cancer) killed 584,881. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf

Terrorism, by comparison:

• Deaths from terrorism increased 80% last year to the highest level ever, with 32,658 people killed, compared to 18,111 in 2013.
  
• Boko Haram and ISIL were jointly responsible for 51% of all claimed global fatalities in 2014.
  
• 78% of all deaths and 57% of all attacks occurred in just five countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria.
  

Getting even more guns (or automatic guns, or machine guns, etc) is probably not going to help us reduce our already low terrorism death count in the US (18 deaths!), and we're suffering numbers of firearm deaths roughly equal to what the entire world suffered from terrorism in 2014, and it took an 80% increase in deaths from terrorism in 2014 to even bring terrorism's world death count up to the same place the US's firearms death count is at... I am, of course, assuming that US firearms deaths haven't changed drastically in 2014. The 2013 firearm deaths are the last year the CDC has figures for, but they've been fairly stable, iirc. You can verify in the CDC link above, I believe.

[Strife26]

And the terror watch lists are such pieces of absolute shit anyway, I can't see it doing anything to help security, complete with the large freedom cost. No thanks.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah--I mean, I think we need drastically stricter gun control, but doing it based on largely unregulated government watchlists is fucking idiotic on multiple levels.

[smjjames]

And the terror watch lists are such pieces of absolute shit anyway, I can't see it doing anything to help security, complete with the large freedom cost. No thanks.

You do know that might actually happen with Trump as president?

We already know he appeals to the lowest possible denominator, so, basically that's the kind of thing he'd do.

[Aklyon]

If we actually get trump as president, we have bigger issues than government lists.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If we get Trump as president it'll be a glorious day from several angles.

[Bauglir]

If we get Trump as president it'll be a glorious day from several angles.

i can't argue with that

i mean, a nuclear explosion is a pretty glorious thing, too

[Willfor]

Hail the blest atomic morn
Unto the earth a bomb is born
The pebble bed reactor core
Up to the sky ascends

Hail the blest atomic sea
Its mouth in Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Whose lips untouched with blasphemy
Our glowing eyes attend - Aaron Weiss

[Shadowlord]

I can't decide if Donald Trump's theme song should be Dr. Steel - Drop Da Bomb or Marilyn Manson - We're From America ("We don't believe in credibility because we know that we're fucking incredible").

[mainiac]

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/11/most-fascinating-thing-about-donald-trumps-racist-tweet

[Morrigi]

Motherjones? Might as well link Gawker while you're at it.

[Shadowlord]

We could already tell he was trying to become the American Hitler, so, really, is that any surprise?

[Morrigi]

I realize that over reacting university students have been a polarizing media hog since the 12th century (I am not actually exaggerating this one), and yeah, it's cool to vent about them. I'm kind of more worried about the ones that are going far, far to the right. The ones going far to the left have a millennium-old tradition of cooling down as they age, while the ones that move to the right have a century-old tradition of starting world wars.

In the modern era, the far right usually only gets serious traction when the far left or moderates run the country into the ground and/or start a civil war.