The right to own a weapon is not, nor should it be, a fundamental right. If there were no consequences to gun ownership, I would certainly support allowing all guns everywhere. But there are consequences. Guns kill people just like fists kill people, except it is much easier to erroneously kill/injure with a gun.

I dispute the claim of self-defense rights. It is indisputably safer to not own a gun than to own a gun, save for the rare case when the area is so dangerous that using the gun to save oneself is statistically more likely than using it to kill oneself/others, on accident or otherwise. And all of these special cases exist only because guns exist in the first place. Remove them all and violence drops dramatically (after all, there is no such thing as a drive-by knife fight).

The mission to remove guns from the streets is akin to the drive to promote world peace. In fact, they are essentially the same thing. Although promoting peace can have consequences (often, it creates conflict) the less war there is the better. It is the same with guns. The unique factor that makes guns, like war, so worth fighting against is that they cause significant collateral damage. They fuel drug cartel violence, they contribute to accidental deaths and suicides, and they often kill innocent bystandards. Other weapons? Not so much.

The attempt to ban guns begins at the supreme court. The 2nd ammendment must be re-interpreted under its primary intention, "militia." Militia, in today's speak, means locally stationed military, or just military. If reinterpreted correctly, this law does not protect gun owners.

Next, the federal government would coordinate with states to completely eliminate all production of new guns in the country, and ban the importation. This would stifle the supply to almost zero.

Finally, gun buyback programs and phased-in laws against gun ownership would slowly remove the remaining guns.

This would require a lot of effort, and a lot of redneck outrage, but it would all be worth it in the long run. To the few people every year who get attacked by people and theroretically could have saved themselves if they had a gun (and also the assailant did not have a gun (and the victim could not have just defended with a knife)), sorry. You will die, but for the benefit of millions of victims and victims' families.

I conclude with this statement: the less opportunities we have to kill, the less we do.

Keynesians don't advocate free-for-all military spending period, unless it is the only way to stimulate the economy during a recession and liquidity trap. By no means would Keynesians support the Vietnam war during good economic times, they much prefer domestic spending that also boosts long-run growth (i.e. infrastructure). Weaponized Keynesianism, as Krugman calls it, is only a last resort.

Regardless, the primary cause of the stagflation in the 70s was the oil crisis. I admit a currency not connected to the gold standard could be more unstable, but it also tends to drag down the entire economy. It affords the fed, nor any other entity, to exert control on out-of-control market forces. In the event of an emergency (i.e. run on the banks, economic catastrophe, inflationary/deflationary spiral) a gold-standard economy would be doomed.

May I also note that one of the ways we got out of the 70s recession was Reagan's Keynesian spending spree. While this contributed to the rise of the deficit, the main culprit was his tax cuts. Bush is an even more egregious example of the failure of "weaponized Keynesianism" and low taxes: his policies imposed a debt burden while leaving us stuck in a jobless recovery (that is, before the crash of 2008). Had he avoided tax cuts altogether, sought infrastructure improvements, and avoided wars the jobless recovery wouldn't have been jobless, and our current deficit would be much more reasonable.

I wouldn't trust Ron Paul with ten dollars, let alone the entire economy. Gold standards put deflationary pressure on the economy, and do not allow the government to spend money when it really needs to. It doesn't just crucify farmers on a cross of gold, it crucifies everybody. What Ron Paul's supporters fail to realize is that the days of unregulated markets with gold standards actually sucked hard. There were all kinds of bank runs and panics.

The housing bubble, as well as the tech bubble and others, were not failures of Keynesianism. Instead, they were failures of conservative economic policy. Greenspan's failure to identify the aforementioned bubbles until it was too late was not a systemic failure of Keynesianism, it was a professional blunder. Bubbles form naturally, especially in highly deregulated marketplaces with high speculative activity. Keynesian theory did not participate in the creation of these volatile markets. In fact, when used correctly, Keynesian policy is the only way to mitigate the ravaging boom/bust cycle. Without it, depressions would last indefinitely and booms could expand without supervision. Using the many tools at the Fed's disposal, any crisis of either high inflation or high unemployment can be mitigated. In addition, the fed can keep control of the housing market and the stock market.

One major myth of Keynesianism that Jtopolnak promotes is that Keynesians are for "irresponible spending." This is a complete lie. Keynesians are for targeted spending, directed at the correct sectors and at the correct time. With markets becoming more and more complex and prone to failure at all levels, it would be delusional to leave the invisible hand to its own devices. To blame all the instability on Keynesians just doesn't make sense: new technologies and corporate/bank culture is what's perpetuating the massive bubbles.

We've seen a world without Keynesianism, a world with widespread poverty and social instability/starvation. In a recession/depression, it is a moral and economic necessity to provide aid to the suffering, and to save the economy from a chronic lack of demand while simutaneously boosting long-run growth by lowing interest rates and increasing spending. During a boom, it is also equally important to dial down spending and raise interest rates. The system only fails when faux-Keynesians overspend, undertax, or move interest rates the wrong way. All problems with the current Keynesian majority, therefore, stem from the pesky minority that invariably pushes in the wrong direction.