I wasn't aware "every national police group" did this. But, if so, they deserve kudos. And I thought Congress actually heeded the plea to let the AWB expire.
It is impossible not to admire Senator Smith's determination to wring something positive from his terrible personal tragedy by going public with his family's pain,
I find it possible, but maybe that's just me.
Screw the NRA. Half my family used to be members (mostly the male half). I wont ever be. Their paranoid, and unconscious admission that their position on gun rights is indefensible and the slippery slope is impossible to correct caused them to support, even encourage, the passage of the 1986 FOPA. Despite its being fronted as a clarification of the second amendment (something anyone with a copy of the federalist papers and/or a relevant college history book can do) is actually the largest infringement of citizens second amendment rights, as they were understood by the men who wrote our constitution since… ever. It effectively helps to keep citizens from owning modern, military-quality small arms (excluding semi-auto and bolt action rifles and pistols, but I would not doubt a national .50BMG ban is in the works with these new crazy powers that congress suddenly has according to the FOPA) and basically contributes to the anti-gun/VPC agenda of eroding the second amendment rights of American citizens to nothing.
Neverdem: “Suicide is not a disease, but rather a somewhat particular form of Darwinian natural selection.”
I disagree. Suicide, in some cases, might be caused, in part, by genetic factors, but is for the most part due to environmental (both internal and external) factors. Plus social darwinism is about the furthest thing from the truth on god's green earth. unless the crazy christian-conservatives, lead by the upstanding pat robertson, decide that genetic engineering is not against the will of god (which BTW includes all sorts of insanity if biblical laws are to be believed) evolutionarily the human race is doomed to quasi-stagnation.