Let’s start here, with an opinion piece by former Tennessee governors Bill Haslem (R) and Phil Bredesen (D)
We’re a Democrat and a Republican. Here’s how both parties can start on gun reform – together.
We’re two former Tennessee governors, we both served eight years, one of us is a Democrat, the other a Republican. We have different views on various issues, and we’re friends (snip)
We’ve both come to deeply respect the wisdom and common sense that Senator Baker embodied. One thing he often told people was that whenever you have two sides that are hopelessly divided, the trick is to find something, even a little thing, that you can agree on, and then build from there.
We could start with “red flag” laws — a way to identify people with potentially dangerous mental health issues and a legal process to remove their access to firearms. That might have been effective in the shooting we just had; the shooter was under treatment for mental health issues and yet still obtained and possessed multiple guns.
Another small step might be making gun owners take more legal responsibility for securing their weapons. Anyone, conservative or liberal, who believes in the value of personal responsibility should be able to agree that it is irresponsible to possess a dangerous weapon and not reasonably secure it from misuse by others.
Here’s are the problems: Democrats want red flag laws to be super intrusive and used to deny people their gun rights for the most minor of things. They want to heavily penalize people if their guns are stolen and not completely secured (and aren’t particularly concerned with the thieves). Even penalize if it’s not secured to the point where it makes a firearm worthless for protection. Oh, and what the Democrats really want is mass bans. They would take those “small steps” agreements and blow by them. Here’s the editorial board of the Sharon, Pa The Herald
EDITORIAL: Semiautomatic rifles belong in a special category
….
“Any rifle, whether it’s a hunting rifle or a military-style rifle, ups the anxiety, ups the danger because of its penetrative capability,” said Jewell. “A rifle bullet travels further, faster and harder than a handgun round.”
Jewell declined to differentiate semiautomatics from other types of rifles — including single-shot, bolt action, lever action and pump action.
But there is an important difference.
Other types of rifles available to the general public, a qualifier that excludes fully automatic weapons, requires shooters to take some sort of action after firing before they can shoot again. Whether that’s reloading in the case of a single-shot weapon or pulling back a bolt or lever or pump, there is a delay between shooting one round and the next.
With a semiautomatic rifle, the shooter fires a round with each trigger pull. No additional steps required.
If semiautomatic rifles compel multiple police officers to stand down rather than engage a single shooter armed with one, then we have to conclude that they are too dangerous for the general public to own and use.
We don’t allow for private ownership of bazookas, machine guns or flamethrowers. Semiautomatic firearms belong in the same category. It’s time to reinstate the ban that existed in this country from 1994 to 2004, when Congress allowed it to expire.
They are not differentiating between the scary looking “assault rifles” and other semi-auto rifles. They want them all banned. They flip here and there and mention AR-15s, but, they really do want a blanket ban. And more
Semiautomatic rifles wouldn’t disappear instantly if they became illegal. But owners who comply with a law would surrender theirs.
The rest would be swept up, by ones and twos and threes, and their owners punished with federal prison sentences. With no new ones entering the market, they would eventually become rare, then non-existent.
That’s right, it would be illegal to own any, no grandfathering, which is a Constitutional violation. The “let’s work together” Republicans just do not get it. Even though Democrats tell them explicitly.
Read: Surprise: Gun Grabbers Call For Banning All Semi-Automatic Rifles »
“Any rifle, whether it’s a hunting rifle or a military-style rifle, ups the anxiety, ups the danger because of its penetrative capability,” said Jewell. “A rifle bullet travels further, faster and harder than a handgun round.”
I had been strolling beneath the cherry blossoms with Rep. Pramila Jayapal for about 15 minutes on a recent morning in March when she was greeted by her first fan of the day. “Thank you for taking care of America!” a white-haired man in a baseball hat yelled out, with the enthusiasm of a tourist getting more than his money’s worth on a visit to the nation’s capital. (snip)
New post-indictment polling data from former President Donald Trump’s campaign shows that not only does he hold a commanding lead in the GOP primary and a lead over Democrat President Joe Biden in a likely general election matchup but that more voters in both the primary and the general election say they are now going to vote for Trump because of it.

Inside this chic Sydney hair salon, the chat between stylists and clients could be much the same as in any other hairdressers around the world. Some small talk. The ubiquitous and occasionally mundane chat about holidays and traffic. For regulars, the conversation can move to the deeply personal before you can say semi-tint or shag cut.
A Belgian man reportedly ended his life following a six-week-long conversation about the climate crisis with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
Groups that monitor far-right and extremist channels online say they haven’t seen immediate signs of organizing for large-scale protests or credible threats of violence in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to his alleged role in a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. They cautioned, however, that this could change, since Trump is expected to be arrested and arraigned before a judge in New York next week.
My boyfriend and I had been dating for six months when we had the biggest fight of our relationship over the carbon footprint of a kerosene lamp. We had finished dinner in the cozy cabin of his sailboat and were about to begin a game of gin rummy to determine who would do the dishes when Doug stood up and banged his head on the kerosene lantern that dangled from the ceiling. He cursed as the lantern swung back and forth, dribbling kerosene onto the table.

