caroljane

in any of the "mass killings" that we have seen in the last three decades. A... Admittedly no, I tend to skip over the pics and specs of various gun types. Guess I was thinking of any gun which can kill 30 people in 30 seconds as an assault weapon. My mistake.

So, let's say that a disturbed military man, or one of his disturbed children, takes a few of the deadly weapons and goes all Fort Hood on a local elementary school. Then what? The police show up with their tasers and truncheons and are instantly killed? And the slaughter continues until the military can be alerted and brought in? Carol, your personal fear and hatred of guns is really blinding you to the devastation that would result from legislation that is based on nothing but your personal fear and hatred of guns. J That is possible, J. It is hard for me to see devastation that would result, hypothetically, from a reduction of assault weapons, etc., among the population. If I knew of anyplace where such devastation had occurred from such a reduction, I would not ignore it, just to confirm my bias. Sometimes the counterintuitive is correct. So in that sense I am blind. My feelings arise from what I can see, the devastation that has occurred, because such weapons existed to cause it.

Huh? Are you saying that you believe that it's possible to confiscate all guns? Guns would be "nonexistent"? They'd, what, be available to government authorities who you deem to be trustworthy enough to have them, and they'd somehow never make it in to the hands of others, or never be manufactured illegally and sold on the black market (um, like illegal drugs which are available everywhere)? J I am saying it is desirable to confiscate them, even if not possible. It is desirable to limit their accessibility as much as is possible. It's desirable based on what? Your feelings? Btw, it's my understanding that this Lanza kid got the guns from his mom's collection. Under your policy of making guns "nonexistent," I would imagine that you're not proposing that even the police and military would not have guns, so what happens when a messed up son of a police officer borrows his daddy's guns to go on a killing spree? What are you then going to propose? J Daddy would not have guns to borrow, only tasers and old fashioned truncheons. Only the military would have deadly weapons.In my fantasy world.

If gun bans will create more victims, why then do crime rates not rise when bans are imposed, especially murder rates? Is America so exceptional that all rapes and robberies would be successfully carried out unless the victim were armed? Do you remember Dunblane? In 1996 a 43-year-old man murdered 16 Scottish schoolchildren and their teacher with legally purchased guns. The outcry was so great that they brought in gun laws. Today Britain has one of the lowest murder rates in the G8 countries, and other firearm offences have dropped steadily-- by nearly half since 2005. I know America is accustomed to teach, not to learn from other countries, but are criminals so different the world over?

If you could somehow manage to confiscate all guns, do your eyes also permit you to see the many victims who otherwise would have been able to save their lives and protect their property with guns? That happens every day in America, though only rarely do such incidents get reported. I personally know a woman who would have gotten gang-raped by three street thugs if she had not pulled a gun from her purse and threatened to shoot them. In her case, as in many others, the mere appearance of a gun can protect someone. It is often not necessary to actually use them. If people use guns to assault others, then they, and they alone, are responsible for their crimes. To deny people who use guns for legitimate self-defense their ability to defend themselves effectively because of criminals is to serve up innocent people as sacrificial victims. Do you also "see" those inevitable victims of your gun ban? Or don't they count? Ghs Yes, as I "see" the beneficiaries of it. There are many more of those.

Everyone except the exempted Orthodox get military training there, don't they? Israel is still a frontier society, always under threat of attack, intermittently at war.

It is good to see that Dog and Pig have agreed on priorities for the New Order, Once the revolution is underway, Pig will be rushed to America in sealed submarine, after purging the Bjorlingites and Carusists from the Party, and join Dog and the real Americans to establish Reason and Liberty better the second time around.

Here's doubly horrific case for Pigeronians, from Wikipedia's list of Canadian school shootings: "A shooting at a vocational High School in Winnipeg occurred when a 17-year-old student shot a 16-year-old to death at Sturgeon Creek Regional Secondary School in Winnipeg, allegedly for ridiculing the rock group Kiss. He was found not guilty of first-degree murder by reason of insanity." If only it had been the other way around: It would have been an act of Pigeronian heroism if the 16-year-old had shot the 17-year-old for liking Kiss. J It would have been triply horrific if the band in question were Rush. In Canada, they call that a hat trick. lol. You shot, you scored.

Huh? Are you saying that you believe that it's possible to confiscate all guns? Guns would be "nonexistent"? They'd, what, be available to government authorities who you deem to be trustworthy enough to have them, and they'd somehow never make it in to the hands of others, or never be manufactured illegally and sold on the black market (um, like illegal drugs which are available everywhere)? J I am saying it is desirable to confiscate them, even if not possible. It is desirable to limit their accessibility as much as is possible. It's desirable based on what? Your feelings? Yes, of course it is based on my feelings that the solution to gun deaths is not more guns. Perhaps fictional violence in American culture .... If we're willing to throw out the Constitution and our concern with rights, maybe.. J Your perhapses and maybes are, I suspect, just as based on feelings as are mine. Your self-described feelings, and use of pathos, are being used to suggest that American society is all fucked up and/or that we should discard our Constitution. No, all societies today are all fucked up each in their own way. I do not suggest you discard your Constitution, although I do feel (that word again) that it could be updated to reflect the 21st century, although I would not suggest it. As you say, that is your business. The respect is mutual, and I do realize and acknowledge the price of your unique freedom. I just wish there were ways to reduce the price and I believe there could be some. I do not pretend there are magic wands and if I have annoyed or insulted you who are suffering this national tragedy, as I have said, I am very sorry . The Canada drunk driving problem is indeed very bad; maybe it is our payback for all the booze we sold you during Prohibition, in a wacky way, most of our illegal guns come from America now.

I don't feel all that swatted. At least nobody is swearing at me this time.

Huh? Are you saying that you believe that it's possible to confiscate all guns? Guns would be "nonexistent"? They'd, what, be available to government authorities who you deem to be trustworthy enough to have them, and they'd somehow never make it in to the hands of others, or never be manufactured illegally and sold on the black market (um, like illegal drugs which are available everywhere)? J I am saying it is desirable to confiscate them, even if not possible. It is desirable to limit their accessibility as much as is possible. It's desirable based on what? Your feelings? Yes, of course it is based on my feelings that the solution to gun deaths is not more guns. Perhaps fictional violence in American culture .... If we're willing to throw out the Constitution and our concern with rights, maybe.. J Your perhapses and maybes are, I suspect, just as based on feelings as are mine.

Buckwheat, you gotta get out of here right now before you catch the Crazy! Alfy

Not by me, it isn't. I don't think and never implied that individual gun buyers and distributors are anything other than individuals, some wonderful people and some not. I do not collectivize in that way.

What's happening to me? On another thread I stand alone in agreement with Ayn Rand, and now Peikoff is my book club pal.I have become a fellow traveller.

Yes Ed, you need to pep it up. Like that Perigo fellow, he is calling on Yaron Brook and Don Watkins to risk their lives, fortunes and sacred honours in a second American Revolution. It would not be a civil war he explains, just Americans vs, antiAmerican traitors. Now that is stirring stuff! and he is not even American. I suppose he will be the one to identify the Americans and the traitors, as he is a neutral. First they came for the heavy metal rockers...

Window sign: "This home is protected by an armed citizen" Translation: "C'mon in and steal my guns"

PDS, it was a bad turn of phrase and I will withdraw it. I forgot whom I was addressing. Indeed you and everyone else on your side of the argument here, I do not mean, or want to insult. Obviously it is an institution I so passionately dislike, which I believe facilitates unnecessary deaths. Please accept my apologies

A pain reliever will not fix your back. But if it stops the pain, maybe you won't know something is wrong with your back. It stops the pain because it is a poison. So if you have pain, what do you do? Or do you never get headaches or anything, because you eat properly?

This is a nice post jts. I have wanted to ask you, do you consider otc pain relievers like aspirin etc. to be drugs? I thought of this because I did something to my back and am totally tranked out on Tylenol, which I acquired by herpling to the corner store in total agony, dressed in winter coat over pajamas. Nick Nolte meets the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Don't worry, I will not go to the doctor, no way I could make it to the door.

Indeed it often pays to let an issue 'stew' for some time in one's mind. Gumbo? --Brant In the case of Angela and me it is five-star bouillabaise.

To kill should not be anyone's right.

Fair enough. I have never thought of you as a civilian but as a soldier.

For the record dggm, I do not hate gun owners, I am one. I do not like handguns, which I see on civilians as cowards' imitations of masculinity. I do not like assault weapons except in the hands of soldiers at war. I except hunting rifles and such which are not designed solely to kill humans. I do not like the cynics who manufacture and sell handguns and assault weapons to civilians, telling you that you are upholding the Constitution.

I was not aware that there was a debate. I did not see Adam offering a legitimate option for anything. Of course more guns will always outgun fewer guns. Yes, if fewer guns were owned by civilians, more lives would be saved, and are saved from gunshot deaths, where the law limits gun usage. Everywhere. Where there are fewer guns , fewer people are killed by them. They will be killed by people who want to kill them, of course, but it will take longer and more planning, and it will be harder to kill the bystanders.

Here is a quote from one of Canada's most rightwing reporters,(I know that is not saying much) from Conn: "How many children brutally murdered with legally purchased weapons will be tolerated, before somebody says, enough is enough?" =Warmington, TO Sun Dylan said it a while ago, how many deaths does it take till we see, that too many people have died?