We all don't agree that every driver should be licensed or that everyone should have auto insurance.   As I may have said before, we don't have learners permits in NH and they have never existed here.  There have always been unlicensed drivers in NH.  Also, auto insurance has never been required here.  We do have inspections in NH, which addresses your issue of broke ass cars somewhat.

As for carry a gun, kids have always been allowed to carry guns in NH.  There has never been a prohibition on children carring guns in NH and I'm not sure if there will ever be one.  I highly agree that gun training is a great idea.  I was in the Army.  I've attended training events but to require it would violated the NH Constitution.  Also, we are not all law-abiding as most of us break several laws every day.

“With modern law enforcement there's no need for ordinary people to have such easy access to guns.”

Law enforcement is not around in the US to protect people.  Maybe it does that where you live but it’s not the mission of law enforcement in the US.  Some towns in NH don’t even have cops.  The crime is so low that the expensive of having cops isn’t always a good idea around here.  Of course, most of the households in those towns have guns.

“This person should have to take a psychiatric evaluation before he's aloowed to own a gun. Things like the person's temper should be tested. And the person should have to take classes in order to learn how to use a gun before he's given a license and allowed to own one.”

Those are gross violations of civil rights where I live.  The people where I live wouldn’t stand for a government doing something like that to them.

“As I said, it's unnecessary in today's society.”

It is the only way people can be protected even close to effectively.  Knifes, tasers and large dogs can only go so far.

“You mean it's not illegal to not wear a seatbelt while driving? What's next? Being able to drive drunk? Being able to drive without a license? Being able to kill people? Your motto should be "Live Free, Die Like an Idiot". You can keep that freedom. With your perverse view of "freedom" and "rights" I suggest you moved to some remote place, outside of scoiety, where you'd be all alone and be able to live as "free" as you like. Many people take the ideea of living in a society seriously, and don't act like infantiles.”

I’m sorry, but why do you think that if a car is stopped because a train is crossing the road that a 50 year old lady in the back seat shouldn’t be allowed to take off her seatbelt for 20 seconds so that she may put a jacket on?  That's against the law is in most of the US.  Some states allow adults to do that in the back seat but not the front passenger seat.  I'm sorry bu these seat belt laws just don't make sense.

 I don’t recommend that people drive while drunk but the current law prevents people from even drinking one beer while driving.  That’s inconsistent because I drink water while driving and it’s just as distracting as drinking one beer is.  I don’t know what any of this has to do with people killing each other.  NH has the lowest crime in the US and some of the safest roads.  Actually, I think MA has the safest roads in the US.  MA is just south of NH and has a seat belt law and all of that.  Yet fewer people wear seat belts in MA than just about anywhere in the US, and it still has the safest roads.

Badgenome I appreciate your well put together post, with excellent links to info that the MSM ignore. They search and leave no stone unturned when it comes to the tea party. And ignore the rhetoric of hatred from the far left. 

And thanks for opening my eyes to zombietime, those photos of anti semitic protests was surely sickening.

The msm have out done themselves with this Arizona tragedy and exposed themselves as to their politics 

Just stunning 

Thanks. It is fairly shocking how the media can tell the truth as far as it goes (that is, they abstain from outright lying for the most part) while creating such a one-sided narrative as to completely distort reality.

Some of these people seem to inhabit Bizarro World. "When Uncle Walter was on the air, people didn't get shot, by God!" Almost makes me glad we do subsidize NPR. Who knows what a deranged soul like Scott Simon could get up to if he were unemployed? And in a world without Walter Cronkite no less!

I know I remenber those days. No one was assassinated during Walters tenure.  I'm glad JFK and his brother and MLK are still with us during those sedated times.

All I can say is you did it AGAIN!  You turn my attempt to express concerns I have had out of a person experience with one Tea Party meeting I have attended into more spin saying, "Yes, but dem liberals are WORSE and the blasted Liberal media is suppporting them!"  You are arguing with me here, not attempting to have a conversation.  You are once more, coming from a partisan mind view and trying to score debate points.  In this, I gave ground here, speaking of 9/11 conspiracy kooks.  You do NOTHING similar on your side here.  Am I to think you believe there is NOTHING on the right that is incorrect and inappropriate and it is ALL justified because liberals started it?  Am I to think you believe Anne Coulter is PERFECT in what she does, and she is RIGHT ON to talk about destroying the NY Times building?  What I am seeing from you now is a mind of a partisan for whom this discussion is a personal war you MUST win.  You have to be right, and ALL that is wrong has to be traced to everything that is liberal.  After all, liberal is not only supposed to be wrong, it is supposed to be EVIL.

All this reminds me of a scene from Cheers, where Sam Malone plays software against some Playboy Bunnies.  He played pure hardball with them, dusting them back and just downright aggressive.  The cost?   He didn't score with any of the Bunnies.  So, flat out, if you are merely going to use this discussion as a chance to score political points and prove that liberal side is responsible for every ill on the planet, then there is really nothing we have to discuss here.  Consider yourself to have won this debate, throw yourself a celebration party and do a victory dance.  Get a football and spike it there.  You won, yippie!  And as policy, America should round up all liberals and send them to reducation centers.  Or shoot, maybe shoot them all but two, and keep them around as living fossils, agreeing with Rush:

Rush Limbaugh: "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus--living fossils--s­­o we we'll never forget what these people stood for."”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,163548,00.html

Wee, this finger pointing game is fun.  I think I scored a few points on the mythical "I am right, and you are not" scoreboard.

Not at all. The point I am trying to make here is that is patently ridiculous for the people who are quaking in their boots right now to fret so about incivility or paranoia or whatever when these things have been with us... forever. As I've shown you, things are absolutely not worse now on that front than they were a few years ago despite the fact that the media tirelessly tries to drive home the message that they are. Nor do I think this sort of thing was worse during the Bush years than it was during the Clinton years, when the insane Clinton Chronicles were being circulated among people on the right. That sort of paranoia will always be there. The side currently out of power just tends to engage in it more, while the side in power freaks out over it until it's out of power and starts nursing its own paranoid side.

The thing to remember is that there is remarkably little political violence in this country, and when it occurs it's almost never from expected quarters. Despite the riveting portrait of right-wing hatemosphere than RFK Jr. paints in his Huffington Post piece, it wasn't a right-winger but a commie who killed his uncle, and it wasn't a segregationist but a pro-Palestinian who killed his father. George Wallace's attempted assassin wasn't an anti-segregationist; he was just a nut who wanted to prove his manhood. Reagan's would-be assassin wasn't inspired by the media's hate-on for a sitting Republican president but by the forbidden hotness of a 13-year-old Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. In fact, I don't even think the latter two instances can properly be counted as acts of political violence even if they were directed at political figures.

People may have heated arguments about things, and a lot of people nurse a healthy distrust for the government that isn't always expressed in the most responsible of ways, but it takes a true fanatic or psycho to kill.

It's paranoid and ineffectual to chalk this up to some kind of conspiracy. If there's a reason for this double-standard, it has something to do with money. People just like seeing right-wingers acting out (whether in a positive or negative light) moreso than lefties. Why is it that people like Olbermann are so much smaller, both in number and in acolytes, than Coulter, Hannity, and their ilk?

It's merely a matter of the media giving people more of what they want: right-wing angst, though i'm not sure why exactly they make so much more money on it than leftists

Yeah, it's absolutely not a conspiracy; it's far too big, for one thing. But I really don't think it has anything to do with profitability. Too many of the liberal dominated media establishments of old are in dire financial straits for that to be the case. It has gotten to the point that Dan Rather is banging his cane on the table and demanding that the government step in and save them because the country needs an independent media, and they'll be super independent if they're getting money from the government... somehow.

It's most likely just a matter of group think. Far more journalists identify as liberal than conservative. It's only natural that people who work in something of an echo chamber are going to overemphasize some things, underemphasize others, and miss out on some things altogether, even if they have the absolute best intentions. It's a true bias, in other words.

Could be viable. If the government broadened the fairness doctrine such that giving equal voice to ideologies across the board meant the difference between getting extra funding or not, the news groups would comply, especially if it was applied equally, thus removing the question of fairness as being bad for competition out of the equation.