MONOPOLY

One organization in the United States will soon become the primary, perhaps even the sole testing agency for public education. 

Can you say "monopoly"?

The Pearson company now owns the tests that allow teachers to become highly qualified in subject areas. They produce a majority of public school textbooks. They own the test that will determine if students have met educational standards defined by the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Most recently they bought and are revamping the GED brand, which provided an alternative route to a diploma. 

Most people understand that a monopoly exists when a single company controls all of one product—if all the citrus fruit in the world were distributed by one company, MYoranges, that would be a monopoly. I learned in high school why this is bad for just about everyone except MYoranges. Growers have no one to sell to but this one company, which is then in a position to dictate prices. At the other end, if consumers want the fruit, they must pay whatever MYoranges demands. This violates the principles of a free market. It's not free. One company has absolute control of what goes to market and what prices are paid. As a producer, I can chop down my orchards and grow another crop or accept whatever the buyer decides to pay. As a buyer, I can give up citrus fruit altogether, or I can pay whatever the seller chooses to demand. The real priciples of supply and demand are abandoned in this artificial market controlled by one company. You probably learned about this in high school, but in case you didn't: this is called a horizontal monoploy that places a barricade at some point across the production and distribution of goods.

In case your high school Social Studies class also failed to explain this, such monopolies are against the law in our country. They violate free enterprise. They damage our economy. They have damaged our nation. The robber barons of the nineteenth century became wealthy on the backs of suppliers, their own employees, and the buying public. The federal government stepped in to make them stop. 

Again: Monopolies stand to gain fabulous profits as a result of holding unfair, exploitative advantage over the market. Periodically, the government notices this and a company is prevented from taking over another company or is forced to "diversify" in order to prevent such impediments to our free enterprise system.

There is another style of corrupt monopoly, which is also against the law. A vertical monopoly generally focuses on narrower bands of products, but has control from production through distribution, top to bottom—vertical control. MYoranges would own all the orange orchards, the trucking companies that took the oranges to market, and the stores where the oranges were sold to the public. A real example: A vertical monopoly existed in the film industry before the middle of the last century. The big studios owned contracts to all the actors and directors, made all the films, owned the distribution companies for those films, and even the theaters in which they played. If you wanted to work in the industry, you worked for the big studios or not at all. One of these was Paramount, which held a vertical monopoly from production through sales to the public. This is why in many small towns there are historic theaters named Paramount. Paramount controlled everything from the making of films to the eventual ticket sales. 

They were made to stop. 

Right now, probably the most dangerous horizontal monopolies in the country have to do with information since a very small number of companies (only six) own most newspapers, radio stations, television stations, and even what you can find by searching the internet. This results in the public receiving a consistent message tailored to suit a very specific agenda—that of the owners of the media. Big hint: They aren't looking out for ordinary citizens. 

The other dangerous monopoly is building in education, where a tiny minority of people—whoa, another big hint, they are not actual educators—controls the design of educational goals, textbooks, and testing of the success of that design. Think about this: They set standards for what students should know, charge teachers to prove by multiple choice that they know what to teach, sell the textbooks to teach it, bill us for designing how to test the success of their own program, and then charge to tell us how we are doing. Think Pearson, think a corporation with no stake in your child's education beyond many billions of dollars in their pockets. 

Some people argue we are not spending enough on educational testing. I'd argue that these summative tests are inherently flawed, that they place American children in the greedy hands of people who value profit over people. 

Pearson isn't testing what I think is important, they test what they think is important—do we intend to turn public education over to for-profit businesses? I think some people do. I do not.

"[Pearson] pretty much owns public education... it's kinda scary," one school administrator said to me. 

I think we should all be worried about this. 

WASTE PAPER PACKETS

A former student and now fellow teacher messaged me: 

"I would love to read your response to this viral video. The comments in response have been mostly one-sided. The comments attack all teachers and praise this student for his outburst." 

She was upset about the video. It had become personal. The film shows a student ranting as he leaves the classroom. He's making a point, arguing that his teacher is failing in her job. I later kept running into the video on Facebook with many comments, probably somewhat toned-down versions of what would have been posted anonymously on the website. It was comments attacking teachers in general that most hurt my former student. And me too.

The video does not allow me to see the entire incident, what led up to the student's outburst. He complains about packets. The teacher sits behind her desk and is very calm. I didn't read the comments below the video since I find most such anonymous comments ridiculous and ignorant. I think the teacher handled the outburst very well. 

Nevertheless, if it's true she was only handing out packets to "teach", I can not blame him for his impatience. I use packets for term projects, and these outline all the steps of complicated assignments (use of MLA form in an essay, for example). I don't use worksheets, fill-in packets, and so forth other than as a rare option to allow students to generate a draft before typing an assignment if they don't have access to a computer at home and must rely on limited access to school computers. I’m teaching high school juniors. They are well beyond the most entertaining worksheets. The boy in the video argues for "face-to-face" and I'm not sure what he means by that. Everyone learns best one-on-one, but maybe he'd only like some discussion, some actual instruction. 

I've had students lose their temper in my class. I've lost my own temper, though not nearly as often as I have had to walk into the hall until I could calm down. Students have thrown things at me, called me names, and asked me insulting questions. I've had to manage students with severe mental health issues and learning issues and a few who had been convicted in adult courts of serious violent crimes. I have occasionally hidden for a few minutes in an empty room to cry alone before going on with my work. These things happen. 

Students do rarely rant and rave. Sometimes at me. Sometimes with good reason. I've been a teacher a long time. I know my job. I've made mistakes. 

Though of course I would not welcome such an outburst, I can't help feeling it's a good thing that students demand more. Most teachers I know are trying their very best to do well by students. I know many strategies and I owe it to my students to use the best I have in my toolkit to help them learn.

The rest of it, the need to inspire—I certainly try, but I find the widespread expectation of inspiration pretty intimidating. I've had parents go off on me for failing to inspire their child to do their homework. All I can say is that I do the best I can and sometimes it isn't enough. No one feels worse about that than I do. Maybe they should wonder why they expect the person who sees their student for five hours a week over twelve weeks should be able to accomplish what they haven’t been able to manage over the past sixteen years?

The day before I watched the video had been a pretty awful day. That night I had conferences after school until 8 in the evening. A teacher I know made a student cry by pointing out what had become obvious: "You have allowed something to take control of your life." The student recognized the truth and has been better in all classes since. 

That evening and the next day we spoke to many parents and guardians who spared the time to come in and talk about their students. They shared the same concerns I have: We all want students to learn and grow. 

We're all dancing as fast as we can. We don't have time to waste. 

MARKETABLE

A Facebook friend who teaches at a university on the other coast wrote a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal in response to Kirk McDonald's op-ed about employable skill sets: "Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won't Hire You". My friend is angry that an employer is asking for too much from new hires and about the general lack of respect and understanding of professionalism, the outsourcing of jobs, and unwillingness to train people on the job. 

He has plenty of valid points, and I don't disagree with most of them. He made me curious about the piece he was responding to, so I had a look.

Kirk McDonald is president of PubMatic, an ad tech company in Manhattan. He is looking for potential employees with a basic understanding of his business, which is based on technology: "Unless you understand the fundamentals of what engineers and programmers do, unless you're familiar enough with the principles and machinations of coding to know how the back end of the business works, any answer you give is a guess and therefore probably wrong. Even if your dream job is in marketing or sales or another department seemingly unrelated to programming, I'm not going to hire you unless you can at least understand the basic way my company works. And I'm not alone." 

McDonald suggested a summer class for the basics. My friend wants this man to tag on two words to his ads: Will train. 

But I'm betting McDonald does train, he just wants his employees to hit the ground with a basic understanding of the business that hires them. And in a buyers market, he can afford to be picky. If I ran a publishing house, wouldn't I be ahead if I could find a computer expert who understood something about English?

It does not seem unreasonable to me that a tech company would look for new hires who, after a college education, have some understanding of technology. 

Some of my students are more than just good at school, they are curious. My most accomplished students are interested in more than As, they want an education. There is the degree and then there is education. 

There is a difference. 

I see it all the time—the students who come in asking how to raise their grades, versus the students who bring up interesting questions in class. The ones who take the easier track in order to "keep my GPA" versus the ones who try something new. The ones checking off boxes versus the ones who are thinking all the time, actually thinking about what they are learning. 

Some box checkers figure this out eventually: Their future families, communities, and employers don't need box-checkers. They need talented people willing to continually pursue advanced skills and knowledge. And here's where it gets interesting, because the wisest students at my school, including those skilled in computer science, have strength in more than one area. 

The stereotype of the computer geek is that (usually) he lacks social graces, but is one with machinery. If that person also has soft skills—the ability to work with people—he or she is in a particularly strong position as a potential employee. If he or she also has strength is something else specific to the job opening, well, that might nail it. Like the strong writer with some understanding of computers or the math major who has hands-on experience as a machinist, or the software designer with an art background, it is the combination of skills that makes a person uniquely employable. 

The most common university degrees today are in Business Administration. Judging by ads on the internet, most people go into Business Admin to earn money—it's less passion than simple economics. Studies have shown this is also the easiest program to complete, which might be another reason the degrees are losing prestige. I would guess that most applicants to McDonald's firm come with a BA in Business Administration or an MBA in hand. I think what he's really saying is: That's not enough. Bring skills specific to my business and to the job you want to do, some commitment beyond your own economic future, and then we can talk. 

SPARK NOTES AND CROSSING THE LINE

"Ms. Priddy, why is it that we're only learning about all this in our senior year and in a college class?" We had been discussing great works of world philosophy, and this student had, moments before, asked me if Bolivia is in Africa. 

Before readers get all incensed about the Bolivia question, let's look at the question about philosophy.

Short answer: It isn't on the test. State standards haven't incorporated world history, cultures, religions, politics, or philosophy. We are teaching our students the Spark Notes version of an education.

Long answer: 

• Americans don't like knowing much about the rest of the world. Our U.S. culture has become devoted to the absurd fiction that ours is the one and only way. We aren't interested in how other people live except as a measure of how right we are and wrong they are. 
• Teachers who might have addressed these issues in previous generations are too busy teaching to a test, focused on fact instead of the range of opinion. 
• In the rush to raise the bar on education, we seem to be doing the exact opposite of what successful programs around the world have chosen to do, by focusing on multiple choice tests as the legitimate measure of accomplishment.*
• There is little agreement about what historical, political, cultural, religious, and philosophical information should be taught. People want their own political agenda promoted in Social Studies classrooms. Since my childhood, textbooks have been written to please the loudest voices, such as the political right wing in Texas, which is why the fourth grade U.S. history textbook I was taught from in school called the Civil War the "War Between the States." (I recall coming home from school and my father re-teaching what I had been told. No, factory workers in the north were not worse off than slaves in the south. At least an Irishman in Boston could emigrate west, an option not open to the man in chains.) 
• And that last is the main reason it's not on the test. We want a simple answer to every question. There isn't one. 

*NOTE: If it were possible to create a reliable, authentic measure of human potential by using a multiple choice, computer-graded test, the College Board (SAT) would have done it already. They've been working at this since 1901 and they still haven't nailed it. Two of the ACT subtests, Science and Reading, have recently been found to be highly unreliable predictors of future success. And while earning good grades in tough classes is a good predictor of how students will fare in college, AP classes in science, for example, apparently have nothing to do with future academic success in science, according to a Harvard study of eighteen thousand students. Even the College Board's own research shows that high school grades remain the best predictor of college success. (Wait! Does that mean we could save perhaps $1.6 billion dollars that will be spent in public schools each year testing the Common Core State Standards if we went back to trusting teachers' opinions about student learning? Imagine that.)

And all of this, the AP, SAT, ACT, and the coming CCSS tests, however useful as a secondary measure of ability and earned skill, all of them fail as measures of the range of skills and behaviors useful in a real life. Remember real life? 

There was a push a few years back to recognize that children in our schools will someday have multiple roles to fill in life as citizens, family members, contributors to their local and political communities, consumers, and producers. When the most recent push for educational reform in Oregon arrived in the 1990s, we looked at whole people, we looked for experiences that would help our students become functioning adults. I was on a panel of educators that met to hash out where education should go. We had great plans. There was cynical talk at the time that it would all come down, at the end, to a standardized test. 

I disagreed. We were trying to make education something better, more authentic to life, something more challenging and meaningful for our students. We would not abandon the very qualities that have made our nation great—imagination, creativity, diversity. I thought we couldn't possibly let all that go. 

I was wrong. 

This is what educational reform has come down to: teaching material that can be easily measured by a machine-scored multiple choice test. "Multiple guess", we used to call such tests. 

A practical understanding of world philosophy and political realities can't be measured with A, B, C, or none of the above. Human brains, not to mention human experiences don't work that way. What about art, music, architecture, and scientific exploration? What about compassion and kindness? Critical thinking?

What does all this have to do with my student's question and the image above? Educators need to stop toeing lines drawn for us by non-educators and begin crossing them. That student is smart and capable and learning. He wants to know why he hasn't learned more. His is a smart question.

Our students need to cross lines too. They should experience intimate connections with diverse life experiences. They should respect effort and honorable intentions even when this leads to life choices they would not make. They should make mistakes of their own and learn from them. They should be capable of changing their minds—as a student did the other day after writing the reverse version of her junior research paper. Can I change my thesis? she wanted to know. She meant the original paper she'd been working on for weeks. Oh, glory, yes! 

They should study the stories of Nigeria and the Dominican Republic and Taiwan, not just their own pet stories rewritten over and over and gussied up with vampires and schools for magic. They should read across gender lines and geographical lines and culture and time. Yes, it's hard, but that's what growing up is about—doing the hard stuff until you are good at it. 

Our students should not graduate from high school with passing test scores but without an understanding of how the rest of the world thinks, prays, reasons, works, creates, and dreams. My student had been taught to look at a map, but he hadn't been taught anything significant about that map. He should know more than what continent Bolivia is in—he should know the stories of that nation. And I hope he's beginning to realize that it's not his fault that he doesn't have that knowledge. We're not teaching what matters. Our students should have practical skills about managing money and a household. They should respect a range of viewpoints. They should care about protecting diversity because diversity is what has made the United States a great nation. They should understand that absolutely no significant question they will ever face in life can be solved by choosing the one correct answer from four neat options.  

Later in the day that my student asked about philosophy and Bolivia, a future administrator had another serious question: What is wrong with Sparks Notes? They are inaccurate, for one. They are shallow. Using Sparks Notes doesn't teach students to understand the text or to think for themselves. These pre-packed cheat sheets offer the sort of information that might be found on a multiple choice test. We should want more. We should demand more. I would think a future principal would not need me to explain this. 

PURLS BEFORE SWINE: SNAP!

Sometimes an event occurs that just makes me snap. Last evening I received an email from a Portland shop where I have spent hundreds of dollars on yarn over the years. They are promoting a new yarn made by a man who used to work for a yarn company I love, Koigu. The Canadian company was created by an Estonian, Taiu Landra, and we're even Facebook friends. This new company seems to be recreating the very yarn that the owner was formerly employed to make—same weight, same color patterns. This reminded me of an experience I had in their shop a couple of weeks before. Snap.

I sent the store an email:

Hello,

I have been shopping at your store from the time you opened. Though I live 80 miles away, a stop at your shop has long been part of our bi-monthly routine trips to Portland. You might have counted me a loyal customer. I always recommended your shop as the place to go for yarn in Portland. That's why I am writing to explain two issues.

First, your new yarn looks very nice, but I won't be buying it. I am also loyal to Koigu and have been purchasing their yarn for longer than you have been in business. I am unimpressed with a man taking someone else's (a woman's) product and remaking it as his own. It offends me in several ways. That you are carrying the yarn bothers me too.

Most recently, I visited your shop with my 1 1/2 year old granddaughter. I held her or her grandfather held her during our brief visit. She did not scream or squeal. She said exactly two words while we were there—she pointed at a yarn label with a cat on it and said "cat." Twice.

Her hands were clean—as clean as mine. I touched several skeins. I allowed my granddaughter to touch one when I asked her which color she liked. She reached out and touched it.

Your employees, throughout the few minutes we were there, looked horrified, and I felt unwelcome. As a result I left without purchasing the yarn I'd come in for.

Everyone thinks their own children are adorable—I understand that I must appear biased. However, in this case our granddaughter was under control, quiet, clean, and not disrupting anyone's work. The shop was not busy. Two employees, whom I did not recognize, had little enough to do that they could both hover around and look worried.

I also understand that not everyone loves or even likes children, but since you have so many pattern books for children and many of your customers knit for them, I would expect to be greeted in a friendly manner and not treated as a danger to your stock—which was how I was treated that day.

I won't be troubling them again.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Jan Priddy

I shared my story on Facebook. Most of the comments to this experience concerned the unwelcoming attitude of some shop owners toward children. One person pointed out that some loud and disruptive behavior not tolerated in a child is often tolerated when it's coming from an adult. Several people (correctly) guessed the name of the shop in private messages, and one person shared a very similar experience she had in the shop when she'd gone in with her infant in a sling. Others saw the attitude as typically snobby, a reflection of classism, elitism, whatever—and I see that. I often felt compelled to "dress up" for this particular shop. 

If the knitting shop has as part of their business plan to pick and choose who they are willing to sell to, I suppose that is entirely their right. I won't be shopping there again. 

On another note, one friend posted that while she agreed with most of what I'd written, what possible difference did it make what the gender was of the maker of the knock-off yarn?

I see her point. Here's mine: 

I am a knitter and weaver and I purchase yarns from locals when I can, and I order some through the internet when I can't find it in the PNW. The fiber arts are a largely female activity—a rare thing in the business world. I don't go out of my way to buy from men or women, but I am aware that most of the vendors I buy from are women. I was taught to weave by a woman, given my loom by a woman, most of my weaving peers are women, and a woman created the yarn I so love. 

The man who has created the knock off is stealing a woman's creation in a world where few women, historically, have been allowed to claim their own creations in any field. Often, even in fields where women predominate, those people in charge, the ones who are the CEOs and managers and editors and so forth, are men. It was delightful to me that I was buying yarn produced by a woman. The shop that is carrying his product is owned by a woman, all the employees are women, and very nearly all the customers, too. (I did see a man there once.) 

The new yarn isn't something new inspired by the man's work for an established business. It's not offering a new product. It's offering precisely the same product in a slightly different packaging and at a higher price. It's a copy. And though I do not know the story behind this business or why he feels entitled to do this—perhaps he has his reasons and they amount to something other than stealing someone else's market—it feels wrong. I could be wrong myself about that. 

Nevertheless, it strikes me as peculiarly ironic that in a business that exists to serve a largely female population, but in a world that pays, still, women substantially less than men for the same work, a woman would take her business from the woman who developed the product and give it to a man who copied it. It strikes me as wrong. But then I am a card-carrying feminist and you know what we are like. 

[I will also say that I have used perhaps three hundred skeins of Koigu in knit and woven items and I have had one skein that had been overtwisted when plied, and perhaps four or five knots of a single ply in all those skeins. The colors and the methods of dying by hand were unique when it first came on the market and have not been fully replicated by any other company. The dozens and dozens of colors are near-legendary.] 

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 88, and she would have approved of my email to the shop. She would have understood every point I was making, and she would have laughed and given me a kiss for it. Happy birthday, Mom.

TEACHING

Up and down. There have been a lot of lows and highs this year.

The low point this year (so far): the student I'd worked with for two years plagiarized large chunks of an essay, and when confronted, she emailed her regret she had accidentally done this. By this she seems to mean failing to revise the passages so that I couldn't detect that she was using someone else's ideas and insights rather than her own. 

The high point this year (so far): the student from my school, for whom I advocated, winning the Gates. I watched him work hard and then harder, and I am so happy for him and his family.

What keeps me awake at night: worrying that students are not using their access to education to the fullest extent. They check off boxes—done, done, done—instead of thinking... hard. They use grades to keep score instead of recognizing and valuing their own knowledge and skill. I worry that they still don't read directions, that they fail to edit their work, that they do not want to do more than the minimum necessary to earn their target grade, whether that's merely passing or an A. I worry about teachers in my district who are losing their jobs because of inadequate funding. I worry about The Oregonian harping on the PERS benefits as the cause of the State's financial problems. I never coached football at the college level and in my retirement I will be lucky to earn a tiny fraction of what Mike Bellotti receives in a month. I wasn't the one who made his contract and no private business is inflating my retirement. It wouldn't even be allowed. It does show where society's priorities lie.

What makes me angry: people who assume that teachers aren't doing the best they can and people who never attended or taught in a public school but assume they know what I'm doing wrong. They think I do it deliberately. They wouldn't last in my job, but they know I should be doing it better.

What makes me sad: students who fail to recognize that I am their biggest fan and when I say I'm worried about them, that is exactly what I mean—they aren't doing all they should and I fear for their present and future. It doesn't mean I dislike them or wish they would go away, or think they can't do better. It mean I care more about their education than they seem to care.

What makes me saddest: people who assume their own children deserve the best... but the children of other people don't matter. 

But I still go off to work each day feeling hopeful.

Up and down, well that's life, isn't it?

What makes me hopeful: talented and earnest people still enter my profession, and every day students learn to write, add, reason, experiment, exercise, speak, consider history... every day students do the best they can. 

I can smile about that. The world turns.

THE SKY IS FALLING

Number of people killed by guns in the first 98 days post-Newtown: 2,244

Bill Moyers published some interesting statistics yesterday, including a comparison of the number of licensed gun dealers compared to the number of grocery stores in the United States (Number of licensed firearms dealers in the U.S.: 134,997; number of grocery stores in the U.S.: 36,569). I posted the numbers on my Facebook page. Somehow any discussion about the use or control of guns turns into a discussion of the government walking into our homes and taking over our lives.

If the government—Congress in this case, the people who pass legislation—stepped aside for about five minutes, the American public would pass legislation to ensure that every gun sale required a background check. (Even Fox News is reporting this, folks.) In fact, many Americans already think that’s what happens. They also think that if a buddy gives a gun to a convicted felon and the felon goes out and commits another crime with it, that buddy is in trouble, at least some kind of trouble, like he would be if he bought liquor for a teenager who got drunk and drove into a family. Nope.

If Congress stepped aside, the American public would probably also pass legislation to end the sale of assault weapons and clips with more than ten rounds. (Ditto.) The problem is that people who support more controls are not anywhere near as well funded or hysterical about their view as the NRA's supporters are about theirs. 

Some hunters might not have a problem with changing the laws—some of the ones I know—because it is respectful of their desire, and sometimes need, to hunt in order to put meat on the table. People who live in areas where they feel they need to protect themselves and their property would be okay too. Some (many) responsible gun owners actually support appropriate gun control legislation. 

And then there is the NRA partyline response: “The day that the people fear their leadership is the day that tyranny prevails.”

Say what?

I don’t fear anyone but the hysteria and stupid rhetoric that comes up every time gun control is mentioned. I am safe as houses at the moment, at least in terms of any threat from my government. I am the government. So are you. Unless there's a whole lot of really, really angry people with a lot of money... but now I'm talking about the NRA. 

In 1970 I was photographed by the FBI at a demonstration in Seattle. A Weatherman lived in my tiny University District apartment building. The Seattle Police came and took a woman having a psychotic break to Harborview Hospital. Two people I knew well, including the first boy I actually dated, were shot through the spine by someone else who was drunk and found a gun “where no one would ever find it” and are spending the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. (I’d say those guns should have been locked.) I used to walk by Ted Bundy’s house on my way to classes. I have never possessed a gun and I have been safe. I have been lucky, but I also know that statistically, I'm safe living gun-free. Americans aren't any more violent or weird than people in most other countries, except when it comes to guns. 

I've been in favor of better gun control my entire adult life and I was raised in a home with guns. My parents wanted to ensure that I would be safe around guns and I was. So I really do not have a problem with guns. Like most Americans, I say leave the hunters and whoever wants to collect and store their guns safely alone. Like most Americans, I only have a problem with military weapons in private hands and with felons and mentally unbalanced people owning guns. 

This whole argument is funny to me because I am old enough to recall when women were accused of having no sense of humor about rape and unequal pay. Maybe that's why I am so troubled by the inability of certain people to discuss any of this without turning the whole issue into a conspiracy theory. 

Lighten up, guys. 

Number of licensed firearms dealers in the U.S.: 134,997

Number of grocery stores in the U.S.: 36,569

I thought the groceries versus gun powder comparison was kind of funny (admittedly in a dark sort of way) so I cut and posted those few lines to paste above my link to Moyers' report. A couple people shared it. A few people liked it, but the most lengthy and insistent responses to my post have been not to Moyers at all, but just to the grocery store statistic. What's the point here and where did Moyers get his numbers? They didn't read the article which has links to all the sources. They just want to share their fear. Satire anyone? Irony? 

Food vs. weapons. Now why would anyone find it funny that we have fewer places to purchase what is necessary to sustaining life than the means to destroying it? I wonder why anyone would find that ironic? The hysterical and paranoid reaction to what most people consider common sense—keeping weapons out of the hands of people with a violent past and eliminating from ordinary households the sort of weapons with no use other than to destroy many, many people—THAT is the problem. Some day people will be able to discuss the righteous use and possession of weapons like reasonable adults. We're not there yet. In the mean time, how do you feel about me building an atomic weapon in my garage—that okay with you?

To be fair, instead of arguing with me, go read what Moyers has to say. I haven't checked, but I'm assuming there must be plenty of people commenting on both sides of the debate.