"House Republicans To Vote On Loosening Restrictions On Gun Silencers After Las Vegas Shooting" - this from PoliticusUSA.

"House Republicans are scheduled to vote on a bill this week that would loosen restrictions on gun silencers. It will be interesting to see if that vote still takes place after the worst mass shooting in US history occurred in Las Vegas."

Brilliant. Just what we need.

"Politico reported on September 21, 'The Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), may come up for a House vote as early as next week. The Duncan legislation includes language revising federal regulations on silencers, which currently have tougher purchasing requirements than guns.'"

So if the guy had had a silencer they wouldn't have even known where the shooting was coming from. It would have been arguably useful for a mass murderer. How's it useful for anybody else?

With all that the Republicans have been doing lately, what is there to be proud about in this country?

I think there's a lot to be proud about in the United States.

There are a lot of good people in this country.

This country was founded on the ideals of the Enlightenment - very imperfectly acted out, obviously, with the genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of African Americans - but it was founded on some pretty amazing ideas given the 6,000 years that preceded it and we've come generation by generation closer and closer to achieving those ideals.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that the Supreme Court since 1976 has been increasingly giving more and more rights and powers to corporations and rich individuals and taking those powers away from we the people, from our government and thus much of what's going on is going on.

But I don't think that America has gone nuts, it's that so much of our discourse has been captured by people who make an enormous amount of money on death, whether it's the NRA or the military defense industry or whatever.