Crossword
Monday 7:47
Tuesday 9:21

Mondays puzzle was terrible in a lot of ways. Rex Parker (real life name Michael Sharp) has blog that critiques the Times puzzle daily. You can go check him out at rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com. He hates quite a bit, and I don't always agree, but Monday was legit bad. His assessment of today's puzzle was "Challenging (for a Tuesday)" but that wasn't my experience. 9:21 isn't that far north of normal for me, and Rex was complaining it took him longer than an average Wednesday. I can see how one might need a lot of crosses for a word like "bludgeon," but I didn't. I got a quick assist from Doug Jones, since he appeared today in the news about the idiocy of arming teachers in the wake of yet another school shooting, and his name was in the puzzle. Certainly higher profile than your average senator because of the whole thing with Roy Moore. Otherwise I might cry foul on a Tuesday clue like "Alabama senator Jones."

When it comes to arming teachers, consider that the NYPD has an accuracy rate in shootings of 18%. There needs to be a Truth campaign about guns like there is for tobacco. Like the fact that if you own a gun, it's dramatically more likely for it to be used to shoot someone who lives in the house than an intruder. Your entire household's life expectancy goes down, and everyone becomes more likely to commit suicide (or at least succeed if they try). Young children in particular are very curious, and very careless. Assault rifles have one purpose: to kill people. Not self defense, not hunting, not target practice. Killing people, as many people as you can. Ditto for bump stocks and large capacity magazines. Nobody needs these. The days of a well-regulated militia are extinct. If the government comes for you, you're leaving with them, no matter how many AK-47s you have.