CactusPete

Great idea! We do need to have a database, and we should also have regular unannounced "checks" to make sure that the registered owners still have the guns. The neat thing about this is that we can get rid of the 2nd and 4th Amendments at the same time. While we're at it we may as criminalize complaining about these "inspections," so that we can bag the 1st Amendment, and since we're on a roll, let's have the inspectors stay in your house for a few days. There goes the 3rd Amendment as well.

Let's face it - this whole "Bill of Rights" thing is just way too expensive. Trust the Government - what could go wrong? The Founding Fathers were just a bunch of paranoid sissies. Let's get rid of their work and get DiFi up there on Mt. Rushmore.

This is reddit. Feel free to joke.

Hi Ed, as someone else said, Thank you for saving the world - what a great business card that would be.

Can you comment on the future of manned spaceflight? For many who are adults today, Apollo and the Shuttle glorified manned exploration, tho the Shuttle did it less so, in low orbit. Now there are few if any manned plans, it seems. And one long-range worst-case strategy for surviving impacts is to have a pool of humans off planet and independently sustainable.

Mars is calling us, and maybe the moon. We have the technology, but perhaps not the will, which relates to lack of public enthusiasm for exploration. There is perhaps no more important mission on the planet, than getting humanity off the planet.

Keep up the good work, and I hope to work with your organization at some point, or perhaps bump into you at the Lunar Commissary, once its up and running.

and the day you got your Reddit name

The whole structure laid out by the Constitution (plus Bill of Rights) is about checks and balances - and the most important part of that is set out by the Bill of Rights. Words are power, and so are guns, and preserving the right of the people to these is a bedrock of the US of Fuckin A, which just happens to be the longest lasting, if not the longest lasting, democracy in history. Governments want to expand and people want to take over, and anyone who doesn't believe that hasn't read history. A common Piers Morgan-type diatribe is to say its ludicrous to envision the American government going tyrannical today or tomorrow. Our limey and his followers miss the point. Why is is ludicrous to envision this? Because the protections that have been in place for over 200 years have worked and are working. Strip them away, as many suggest - and the 1st Amendment is also unpopular in many circles - and things will change.

The fight for freedom is about the future more than about today. Even a casual reading of history suggests that the native state of human government is a monarchy. While it might be called something else, it could happen here, someday. Step one is getting rid of the balances - like the 1st and 2nd Amendments - that prevent it.