Poking holes in intelligent design idea
A recent letter writer correctly stated that many intelligent people are confident about evolution being scientific fact while intelligent design is not. Intelligent design research, with rare exceptions, does not get published in peer-reviewed scientific journals for one simple reason. It does not meet scientific standards. The "many scientists who subscribe to intelligent design" are a small fraction of all scientists. They are even a smaller proportion in the relevant fields of biology and genetics.
To address other issues raised by the writer:
Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. That is a red herring argument used by intelligent design proponents to try and discredit evolution.
The irreducible complexity argument of the human eye, a past favorite of the intelligent design movement, has been thoroughly discredited.
A rudimentary knowledge of mathematics and genetics will allow anyone to understand why more information is stored in human DNA than in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
What is easier to believe: intelligent design or evolution? If the sciences were based on what is easier to believe, we would still think the Earth is flat and would never have been able to send humans to the moon. It's probably just easier to believe we didn't.
Not assault weapons until used in assault
With all of the misinformation written about assault weapons, I'd like to bring a little clarity to the subject. No weapon is an assault weapon unless you assault someone with it. A baseball bat is an assault weapon if you assault someone with it. A steak knife is an assault weapon if you assault someone with it. I read where someone ran a Chevy down a sidewalk and killed a bunch of people. Are we going to ban Chevys, baseball bats and steak knives?
This fall, more than 1.5 million hunters were in the woods deer hunting in just four states. I don't know how many hunters had semi-automatic guns with multiround clips. In fact, it doesn't make any difference. No one was murdered.
We used to have hospitals and facilities for the mentally ill. Central Hospital in Indianapolis locked up violent people with mental problems. What happened to our mental health facilities? We send billions of dollars to foreign countries (that hate our guts), and we can't support mental health facilities here in the U.S.
Just remember, if you forfeit your Second Amendment rights, you can kiss the rest of your rights goodbye. Japan didn't try to invade the U.S. after Pearl Harbor because we have the largest civilian army in the world, and they knew it.