Porn
Not child porn, just everyday, run-of-the-mill porn. Just days ago, the Huffington Post reported that Mitt Romney is assuring religious conservatives behind the scenes that he would "vigorously" crack down on porn. "[Romney foreign and legal policy director Alex Wong] assured us that Romney is very concerned with this, and that if he’s elected these laws will be enforced," one religious right leader said. "They promised to vigorously enforce federal adult obscenity laws."
So porn, more dangerous and in need of regulation that an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round magazine.
Independent thought
The 2012 platform of the Texas Republican Party includes the statement, "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." The Texas GOP says the language was "an oversight on the subcommittee's part," but did not deny that they opposed critical thinking -- suggesting that, yeah they don't like kids who think for themselves, but they wouldn't have put it so blatantly if they'd known people were paying attention.
Critical thinking skills; more dangerous and in need of regulation that an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round magazine.
Voting
While Republicans would argue that it's the God-Given Right of every American to own as many guns of as many varieties with as many cases of ammo as they see fit, they seem to believe that voting is a super-dangerous activity that should -- as far as possible -- be restricted to responsible people who can be counted on to vote Republican. A recent Brennan Center study found that voter ID laws would disenfranchise nearly 11 million legal voters, to fight nearly nonexistent voter fraud.
Voting; more dangerous and in need of regulation that an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round magazine.
Birth control
I'm not talking about insurance coverage for birth control -- although clearly that's a deadly danger to the American populace too. I'm talking about just birth control. Republicans are big fans of state level "personhood" amendments which define life as beginning "from the moment of fertilization." According to Rachel Maddow, "Hormonal contraceptives generally prevent an egg from being fertilized in the first place, but the at-least-theoretical possibility that they might also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus was enough to raise the specter of birth control pills being viewed as an instrument of homicide" -- therefore, "personhood" amendments would necessarily ban The Pill.
Birth control; more dangerous and in need of regulation that an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round magazine.
Science
There are a lot of examples of this, but (in my opinion), there's no better example than the clearest case of scientific censorship out there. Recently, "North Carolina GOP legislators have circulated a bill to outlaw use of science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise." That's right, it's extremely important that coastal North Carolina not prepare for rising sea levels because that would mean admitting that climate change exists. So any mention of climate change must be made illegal.
Science; more dangerous and in need of regulation that an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round magazine.
So the next time some nut shoots up some public place (and there will be a next time), go ahead and write your legislators to congratulate them. Because God forbid that same nutjob vote, use porn or birth control. Chasing victims down through pools of blood is one thing, but telling them about global warming is another entirely.
And this isn't even comprehensive. It' just the first five that occurred to me. There's marijuana or transparency laws for political donors, for example. You'll be able to think of a few yourself. But high-capacity assault rifles?
There are, after all, certain priorities.
-Wisco
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