The question I ask my gun carrying friends is this; You hear gunfire and turn towards it, you see two people with firearms - are they both criminal shooters - or is one of them the shooter and the other a lawful gun carrying person who is doing the same thing you are? Who do you shoot?

They either don't answer or say "whoever shoots at you". Waiting for someone to shoot at you, is asking to get shot, so if you don't witness the original crime - you're as much a threat to innocent lives as the criminal AND you'll likely become a criminal yourself - if you choose wrong.

My point is, arming up for safety in your home is one thing, carrying a weapon in public, concealed or not, is a whole different thing. You have to know when, how and who to shoot - and have to figure this out BEFORE an incident occurs. Why does no one see why police and soldiers go through extensive training for urban warfare? If you have to stop and think before you act, you'll likely die. Conversely, if you act without thinking, an innocent may die, making yourself a criminal in the process. The correct responses have to be TRAINED into the individual - and playing "call of duty" or a similar game, is NOT training, in fact, it creates the delusion that you will know what to do when the time comes. That thinking is pure dee bullsh*t.

Don't you people read. Look at my post again. Out of the 1.5 million Democrats have 40% of the vote the Republicans had 60% of the vote. Or is that math a little bit too hard for your P brain. I know it's hard but try. As far as Hillary goes I can't see how anybody can condone the damage she has done to this country. She sold us out in order to take bribes for her foundation from foreign countries. Between Hillary and Obama they let four Americans die without lifting a finger and try to blame it on some fictitious YouTube. Are you that stupid that you can't see through this lady. Tell me exactly what she has accomplished while she was at the State Department?

Basic to a Republic are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The total irresponsibility of the majority on the Right (though not the majority of Americans, even NRA members) to insist on no reasonable restrictions on guns, directly attacks the common good of our nation. It is domestic terrorism pure and simple. We have a group that feels no sense of decency or conscience in a free for all violence with deadly weapons. Put guns everywhere is their infantile solution. Playgrounds, churches, bars: viola violence disappears?

This is so far down the rabbit hole the word insanity is insufficient to describe it.

Felons are not restricted in all states because a
lack of registration and background checks. And again that second group you mentioned, by reason of insanity, can purchase arms or be given them by family for the same reasons. This is insane! And a direct threat to our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Gun owners are "elite" because the 2nd amendment protects only them and not those put at risk by by those armed citizens. My choice of non-violence is violated by this amendment. I have no redress. The 2nd Amendment is in clear violation of our general rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It serves the few, not the all.

Heather Wilhelm

On Tuesday, the New York Times ran a lengthy profile of the Republican presidential front-runner, a man who is many things, but certainly never boring. Titled "A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, From His Longtime Butler," the article provided an intimate look inside Mar-a-Lago, Trump's "Versailles," a 118-room snowbird's paradise that might become a winter White House if he is elected president. The piece also offered the inside scoop on life with Trump from said longtime butler, Anthony Senecal.

If you can get past the mental image of "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey lounging on a couch under the living room's 21-foot gold-leafed ceiling," the profile reveals some telling tidbits, tossed like stray diamonds amid the various Bentleys, the faded Flemish tapestries and the library "filled with rare first-edition books that no one in the family ever read." That library has since been replaced by a bar that's crowned with a portrait of Trump, majestic, posing in tennis whites.

In the article, Senecal, "a kind of unofficial historian at Mar-a-Lago," recalls how Trump, among other various fibs and exaggerations, "liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles" in the children's suite "were made by a young Walt Disney." Senecal, a seemingly normal person, would often correctly protest that this was not true. Trump, in return, would simply laugh and offer a simple reply: "Who cares?"

Who cares, indeed? A significant swath of voters apparently doesn't care. As the 2016 presidential race has unfolded, we've seen lies flying around like stray car parts at a low-budget demolition derby — with Trump as the fast-and-loose king of blatant untruths, and people so inured to it all that they don't even bother to flinch or duck.

In just the past few weeks, Trump has told so many lies it's hard to know which ones to cite. He lied about serving Trump steaks at a news conference on national television — they were "Bush Brothers" steaks, hilariously, from a butcher in West Palm Beach, Fla. On March 7 and 11, Trump claimed he was "not taking money" for his "self-funded" campaign, which might come as a surprise to the individuals throughout the country who have donated a reported $7.5 million to his campaign.

Meanwhile, late last week, Trump said at a news conference, "I don't think there are two Donald Trumps" literally moments after saying, "There are two Donald Trumps." America simply shrugged and went on with its day.

Trump supporters tend to get irritated when confronted with things such as the blatantly fake Trump steaks; "Who cares?" — unsurprisingly — is a common reply. This is somewhat puzzling, given that many Trump fans claim to like him because he "tells it like it is." It's also puzzling because if you know anything about life, you likely know this: When people lie about little, inconsequential things, they tend to also lie about big, consequential things.

And so it is that we have Donald Trump telling his supporters, "I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees" if someone decides to "knock the crap" out of a protester. More recently, on "Meet the Press," Trump told host Chuck Todd he had "instructed my people to look into" paying legal fees for a man who, apparently taking Trump's advice, sucker-punched a protester at a rally in North Carolina, then told the press he might have to kill someone for Donald Trump. But wait! What's that? Why, it's Donald Trump on "Good Morning America," claiming he "never said" he was going to pay legal fees, even though the video of Trump saying just that is all over the Internet.

Then there's the Donald Trump who, after months and months of claiming that Mexico would pay for his border wall, admitted to conservative talk show host Sean Hannity, "Politically, that's not feasible." Oh, and there's the Donald Trump who linked to a hoax video that claimed one of his protesters had ties to the Islamic State: "All I know," he said when asked about the inaccuracy, "is what's on the Internet."

Politicians have lied for centuries. In this, Trump is certainly not alone. Hillary Clinton, for her part, can tell a heck of an untruth; her husband wasn't so shabby in that arena either. What's new is the rapid-fire, constant nature of the lies, paired with the fact that they're so easily debunked. Traditionally, politicians have at least tried to hide their dishonesty, due to the assumption that voters would care.

With the rise of Trump's post-truth campaign, that assumption has been obliterated. Trump's bet is that enough voters won't care, or, alternatively, that he can simply tire everyone out. So far, he's been right. This week, Trump warned of riots if he were to be denied the GOP nomination for president. Sean Spicer, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, told the press that Trump was speaking "figuratively."

Man, oh man. For the GOP, the truth is probably going to hurt.

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