Kirk, you are an odd blend of liberal, being a gunnie and all. I realize how much you loathe Bush, but you really should check out just how anti-gun (and how pro-gun-registration) Kerry is, just to know what you will be sending to office. 100% VPC/Brady rating.

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My position is you have to take the Bill of Rights for what it says. No matter what the anti-gun folks say -and I believe a lot of what they say is said with the best intentions, the intent of the founders is clear - US citizens should be able to keep arms. No matter how you feel about it politically, that is the law of the land, and anything anyone does to try to pass a law absent a constitutional amendment to change that is simply passing a law that is unconstitutional. I believe the same thing in the case of prayer in public schools and "under God" pledges - the Bill of Rights says they are not allowed. Both sides should simply admit some of these realities of the system of government we have been given - for example, the right needs to lay off imposing religion thru government, for the exact same reasons you oppose gun control, and the left needs to lay off imposing gun control not allowed by the Bill of Rights - if people accepted this we could end some of the arguments in this country.

If you took a close look at the Bill of Rights you would see that it's strict interpertation is going to lead you a lot more left than it does right. For example, Article 4 grants people complete rights over there own person - which gives us abortion, and should give us legal dope, legal prostitution, assisted suicide, gay marriage and anything else where a person's choices that only effect themselves have been made illegal. Jefferson himself is famous for his statement that the 4th Amendment says that a right is anything I do that does not cause harm to anyone else. 90% of our "culture wars" are anti-4th Amendment on the part of the religous-right, and in the old days people who called themselves "conservatives" were as much opposed to religous imposition as they were gun control. In fact, my grandfather used to say a true conservative was a person who wanted the democrats the hell out of his wallet and the republicans the hell out of his bedroom. If the conservatives in this country got back to that, they would find a lot more people like me willing to vote for them.

Personally I think the Bill of Rights is the greatest document ever created by man. My uncle, a strong Democrat who fought in WW II, said something that always stuck with me - no matter what the Republicans think or what the Democrats think, when an American soldier gives his life in battle he is giving it to protect the Bill of Rights and the way of life it gives this country, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to protect your family, etc - he is not giving his life for some political party's latest set of beliefs. That is what separates us from Nazis and Communists and Baathists, and makes the American soldier the greatest fighting man the earth has ever seen - he is motivated by a desire to defend the single greatest set of principles ever set forth by man, not some cult figure political leader or some set of party principles he himself may not believe in. Opposing soldiers who are motivated by party principles or cult of personality simply reach a point where their lives are not worth giving to some ideaology or the latest guy with a mustache on a billboard, so they surrender or run, while an American soldier who believes he is defending a way of life expressed in the Bill of Rights, and who believes that giving his life will make a difference to perserve them, will do so with a ferocity that no other nation has ever matched. We should respect their tremendous sacrifices by seeing to it the Bill of Rights is never tampered with and the rights it grants are never amended. That is why I am against flag burning amendments, gay marriage amendments and gun control amendments. Anything, any idea, that attempts to limit the Bill of Rights is a massive danger to this country, and anything that expands these rights has always been a good thing. We all need to simply accept those are the foundation principles of this great democracy, and accept those principles no matter whether we fully agree with them or not. Much of my oppostion to the War in Iraq is because I believe we are engaged in something other than defending these rights, and it is not worth the sacrifice of men so nobly motivated.

Sounds libertarian.
Mandatory school-employee led prayer should be banned. If kids want to get together and have a prayer group, then its fine, as well as if the group wants a religous faculty member to lead their group. If its voluntary, I dont care if a Cthlulu-worshiping sect starts up at a school.

Well, its a gray area. It is a gray area because there is no universal definiton of when life starts, and when a fetus ceases to be a fetus and be a life. Personally, I dont know. I am open to all but late-term abortions, because the baby can survive outside the womb with proper care at anytime in the last trimester (I think. ).

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