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You know I really miss these pro forma first posts. They kind of make the world go round.
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How To be a Pedantic Git Part 1

OK online debate warriors today we will discuss the one of the most tired and almost always useless observation that the US Government is not a Democracy; it's a Republic. Yes, it is true that the United States government is not a direct democracy. But it's also not a pure Republic either.  Specifically, we have a form of government that is best described as a representative democracy. There are two kinds of democracies, representative and direct. As for republics, the only feature you really need to qualify as one is that the representatives make the political decisions in the government. The electors could be the whole of the body politic (with some restrictions on age and registration requirements), as in the US (except for president as many of us were shocked to learn in 2000 and 2016), or they can be a specific group of people appointed, elected, by right of inheritance or by lot for that matter.
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The Evolution of the 2nd Amendment by the Framers

The notion of a right to bear arms came from state constitutions, like this clause from the Virginia Constitution which was authored mainly by George Mason who would later be involved in crafting the Bill of Rights.  Virginia Declaration of Rights  (12 June 1776) A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power. The first draft of a right to bear arms clause that was proposed for the constitution itself was reported in Charles Hale,  Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts  (1856), p. 86. This language was proposed in the Massachusetts convention for ratification of the U.S. Constitution to be added to Article I of that document. before they made th...
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Woody Hayes on Guns

With all due apologies to U of M fans. Woody Hayes, the legendary Ohio State University football coach was fond of saying ... “Three things can happen when you pass the football, two of them are bad.” Pedantic gits, see end note. Whoa! hold on there, I thought this was about guns? Well, they do talk about " gunning " the football, but that's not what this is about. This is more about how to look at a question analytically. This idea implicit in this quote is that passing the football is a risky move. Now Woody threw the ball as much as anyone in this area of college football but the point stands; throwing the football is high risk. But in the case of the game of football, it is also high reward. You gain much more yardage per successful completion then you do running the ball, with more turnovers. So, what does this have to do with guns? Well, there is a current debate brewing in the wake of the parkland school s...
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