Jacquelyn Wells unexpectedly started a useful discussion about guns when she announced on her Facebook page that she had joined the NRA.

Jim Glickman posted a link to The New York Times opinion piece Once Again, Guns.

I think we gun control advocates have misdirected our efforts a bit.  Rather than advocate tougher gun purchase restrictions, we should concentrate some of our efforts on trying to control the consequences of mis-handled, but legally purchased guns.

One way to do this would be to pass laws that make gun owners responsible for any damages caused by their guns, whether legally owned or not.

I haven’t heard the details of how the latest high school shooter came into possession of his gun, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were owned by one of his parents in a legally acceptable way including background checks.

One way to make gun owners much more circumspect in how they handle, control, and give access to their guns, would be to make them have some legally recognized liability for the consequences of their gun ownership.

If you knew that you could be fined and possibly sent to prison if your gun fell into the wrong hands and was used to commit a crime, then you would really try harder to make sure such a thing could not happen.  If you knew that you could not own a gun safely enough to protect yourself from this liability, it might give you second thoughts on your need or desire to own a gun.

The really basic problem with gun ownership is not merely restricting ownership to people who seem like they wouldn’t personally use them illegally.  The basic problem is controlling what happens with a gun after its sale.

Thanks to Rebecca Deans-Rowe for posting this on Facebook.

How many of you are old enough to remember when news in the USA was reported like this? I bet you young ones think I am kidding when I say that our news media once were capable of this. I don’t say all of them always acted this way. However, the ones that acted like most of today’s media in the USA used to be called by the pejorative term “tabloid media”.

Elizabeth Warren sent me the following email:

Steven,

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is supposed to be responsible for regulating the nation’s biggest banks.

But 46 hours of secret audio recordings released by a former New York Fed regulator – a woman who says she was fired for being too tough on Goldman Sachs – indicate that the big banks are the ones in charge, not the Fed.

When regulators care more about protecting big banks from accountability than protecting the American people from risky behavior on Wall Street, it threatens our whole economy.

Join Senator Sherrod Brown and me in calling for a Congressional oversight investigation into the disturbing issues raised by the Goldman Sachs tapes.

Our regulators seem to think they’re being tough on the big banks. But when I ask them about the last time they took a big bank to trial, or the last time they referred a senior bank executive for criminal prosecution, they’re stumped.  

They claim that closed-door settlement agreements – agreements that don’t hold any individuals accountable – are enough to teach the big banks a lesson.  

Call me skeptical, but when Wall Street CEOs like Jamie Dimon are getting massive pay raises for negotiating sweetheart deals with the regulators, it doesn’t seem like the American people are getting a good deal. That’s why I introduced a bipartisan bill earlier this year to require detailed, public disclosures of all settlements so we can see what’s hidden in these secret agreements.

But the tapes from this whistleblower show that the problem isn’t simply that the big banks get sweetheart deals. It shows that the relationship between the regulators and the financial institutions they oversee is far too cozy to provide the tough oversight that’s really needed – and calls into question whether the Federal Reserve is up to the task of protecting us at all.

This is simple: Bankers on Wall Street need to follow the law – and when they don’t, they should be held accountable. For that to work, regulators in Washington and New York need to enforce the law – and when they don’t, they should be held accountable.

Join Senator Sherrod Brown and me in calling for a Congressional oversight investigation into issues raised by the Goldman Sachs tapes.

We can keep making the rules on Wall Street tougher and tougher, but it won’t make an ounce of difference if the regulators won’t enforce the rules that are there. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

I love the bulldog nature of Elizabeth Warren. Once she gets her teeth into an issue, she does not let go. Imagine if the Republicans take over the Senate, and she loses her power to hold hearings.

It finally dawned on me that I ought to write some letters to the editor of various newspapers in the area.

Editor:

The beauty of Martha Coakley’s economic plan for Massachusetts is that it focuses on investing in enhancing the advantages that Massachusetts already has for attracting businesses to the state. Corporations want to come to Massachusetts for its educated work force. We also have concentrations of expertise in many fields of technology, health sciences, and research. Companies on the leading edges in these fields want to be located where there are centers of excellence in those fields.

What Charlie Baker refuses to acknowledge is that you don’t have to give away our precious tax revenue to companies to entice them to come here. He fails to recognize that we have advantages that companies are eager to get. His short sighted policies rob the state of the money it could use to enhance the value of Massachusetts as a place to do business. No wonder we seem to be unable to afford investments in education and infrastructure. People like Baker would rather give the money away to corporations that don’t need it rather than to spend it wisely on enhancing what attracts business to the state.

Charlie Baker’s policies end up driving away the very corporations we seek to attract, and these policies impoverish us at the same time.

It’s no wonder that Charlie Baker’s ads would rather have you believe that Martha Coakley has no economic plan for Massachusetts. If you didn’t believe his big lie, you might realize that the Coakley plan is outstanding compared to his tired old formula of giving tax cuts to the wealthy corporations.

Does this give anybody else any ideas?