OK, what is your source? Fact Check tried to debunk or verify the 20,000 law claim of last year or a 9,000 federal gun law claim but came up empty. So who says there are 30,000 gun laws and what is their source?
Bad governments can be quite efficient. I’d rather a government that is bad wasn’t efficient as well.
Yes. It is. How is that statement even remotely controversial?
You can have a large government in terms of size of it’s spending. You can also have a large government in terms of how much it regulates it’s citizens.
Look, once again, “laws” are impossible to quantify. You can count the number of sections in a given code of statutes, but a given section might include several “laws,” or might not really amount to one, by itself, unless read together with another section. And many “laws” are non-statutory common-law rules, which are constantly evolving and, again, impossible to quantify.
I didn’t handwave-I asked a question that you didn’t answer.
Yes, it is.
Regulatory != large.
Your question of “who picks” is so silly it doesn’t deserve an answer.
Reducing or eliminating regulations and laws is certainly something that is possible and not so complicated that it couldn’t be done as you seem to be saying.
Who picks? I don’t care.
The person proposing the new law could pick old ones to sunset as part of the proposal and that is voted on along with the law. That would work and would be simple. There’s a dozen other ways you could do it as well.
You can go ahead and keep thinking that. But just know that most people don’t agree and will continue to use the term “large” to refer to other things other than just government spending levels.
Cite that you speak for ‘most people’?
This is semantics. I think the overall idea is wanting a low cost, low service government. That means lower taxes, less regulation, less everything. I’m not sure how productive it is to try and count laws, bills, pages of legislation, or otherwise, but all of these things are efforts to illustrate that the federal government is too intrusive.
Seriously, if my local congress person in their campaign simply said they were going to go to Washington and try to prevent any new law from passing they’d have my vote. If any presedential candidate promised they’d veto every new law, they’d have my vote.
I want gridlock in DC.
Sorry, I meant to say 20,000. That’s the number the NRA uses.
From the Washington Post:
It really doesn’t matter what the actual number is too much. It’s too high. 10,000 would be too high. 5,000 would be too high.
It’s a good example of over-regulation, because as a gun owner I have personal experience going to the police station and talking to the “gun expert” cops that every department has to have now. They can’t answer simple straightforward questions because the laws are so complex that even thought it’s a big part of their job they can’t keep up with all of them.
You haven’t drawn a distinction; you’ve only grunted Government=Bad. Well, why do you want to make a *good *government (if you’re now prepared to admit there can be such a thing; are you?) work badly? Why do you want to get rid of good government, too?
Serious question, that’s been the Republican operating philosophy for some time now, even involving coercion into signing Norquist’s silly pledge.
Maybe. But take a look at the Wikipedia summary of Oklahoma’s gun laws. Clearly there are a lot of them, but you can hardly characterize them in their totality as “not pro-gun.” Even things like open carry laws are still, um, laws.
No, it doesn’t. You’re saying the number of laws matters, and then you’re saying that pointing out the problems with that approach is semantic nitpickery.
You introduced the metric, now you’re dissing it. Which is it? It’s gotta be one or the other.
Except that, as already noted, it’s impossible for new legislation to reduce the number of laws. It can only increase it.
I can’t help it if the metric you chose to advocate here isn’t particularly defensible. But I’m sure gonna point it out.
Oh, from the Congress. I see.
And laws in each locality…good or not so good, depending.
But that still leaves 50 states and D.C. And it looks to me as if even gun-friendly Oklahoma has dozens and dozens of state gun laws, which is gonna get you several thousand, once you multiply by 51.
Do what, embarrass yourself :rolleyes:
Do you think that definition supports your claim that most people agree with you on this topic?
Try again, this time maybe think things through a bit before you try to show someone up and only end up falling on your own face.
I’ve never said this. In fact, I’ve said the opposite and said that legislation can be good in my view, if they serve to reduce the number of laws and the amount of legislation currently on the books.
Yes. From the Congress. Because that’s what this thread is about. Read the OP.
Exactly right. This is a problem, and one that’s not as easy to make blanket statements about as with discussing the laws passed by Congress. It’s probably better suited to another thread.
That’s ridiculous. One can say that the government is a “big government” because it is overly expensive. One can also say that the government is a “big government” because it is overly intrusive. One can also say that it is “big government” for both reasons. Regulatory = intrusive.
Cite where I said I do? In fact, cite where I said the current government is a “good” government?
Assuming that most people share the same definition of the word “large” that the dictionary does: Yes. It does support my claim.
If BrainGlutton has some different definition of the word, he’s welcome to it. I just point out that it will cause confusion for him going forward because most people probably understand what the word means.
It’s silly to think that “large” can’t refer to the size of regulations when speaking of government.