2024 has not been a year for optimism about the American system of checks and balances functioning as advertised.

Even more broadly, there's an old quote:

  There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge (or ammo). Please use in that order.

The soap box is under threat: https://reason.com/2025/12/18/this-tennessee-man-spent-37-da... and https://www.npr.org/2025/04/08/nx-s1-5349472/students-protes...

The ballot box is under threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding_in_the_...

Judiciary is under threat: https://www.gov.harvard.edu/2025/07/24/the-u-s-judicial-cris... and https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/judicial-independence-t...

That just (to much the same horror and sense of unreality I had watching the 9/11 attacks unfold) leaves the ammo box.

Now, I'm British by birth, a country where even the police are not routinely armed, so the American view that weapons are a "fundamental right" is utterly alien to me, and this difference is one of the reasons why I never seriously considered moving to Silicon Valley at any point in my career.

Trump seems pro 2nd Amendment: is that because he is afraid and needs them to like him, or because isn't afraid as he has an army and a secret service to keep him safe, or does he just plain like guns and hasn't even thought about personal risk despite getting shot at?

'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them