– I find there to be somewhat of a logical inconsistency in the outrage over a newspaper in New York identifying who has handgun permits in their area. We often hear that regardless of how accessible you make guns, people who want them will still have them. To a very limited extent, I agree with that. But if that’s true for guns, why isn’t it true for the information about gun permits? The gun permit information that the newspaper printed was publicly available. Anyone could look it up. They just made it more accessible. Does that additional accessibility make a difference? Particularly to an unstable person who might never have thought to look that up in the first place? For folks who are making that argument, the same logic applies to guns.
– I was going to write up something about how Rob McKenna’s acknowledgement that the GOP needs to work harder to appeal to women, minorities, and young people is an odd realization to have immediately after a career filled with supporting terrible policies for women, minorities, and young people, but after some Googling, I found that Cienna Madrid already wrote it for me.
– It’s cool to see how much interest there is in legal pot farming, but I do worry that some folks are a little too optimistic about how easy it’ll be to hit the jackpot as a pot farmer. The taxes dictated by the initiative are high enough that margins will still be relatively low, and unless the state greatly limits the amount of licenses it gives out, people with no experience growing quality product might have trouble competing with more experienced growers. My advice to people looking to make money from Washington’s newfound liberty is to avoid the supply chain for now and focus on opening places where marijuana users can congregate: an Amsterdam-style coffee shop with an outdoor smoking area, a movie theater with a rooftop patio, video arcade, bowling alley, concert hall, etc, etc.
