Ayn Rand on Gun Control

[Selene]

None of these countries has a higher death rate from gunshots however, than does NRAmerica.

Excellent point...obviously it is much, much, much worse to die from a gun than a knife, club, axe, rope, or, a myriad of other devices.

Brilliant exposition!

[BaalChatzaf]

Even the smartest criminals could not steal a nonexistent gun.

There are about a third of a billion small arms in the United States. And this is exclusive of what is in the military arsenals.. We are drowning in small arms.

ruveyn

[caroljane]

None of these countries has a higher death rate from gunshots however, than does NRAmerica.

Excellent point...obviously it is much, much, much worse to die from a gun than a knife, club, axe, rope, or, a myriad of other devices.

Brilliant exposition!

Brilliant evasion. It is much, much easier to kill 20 people in one minute by gun, than by club, axe, rope or slingshot.

[caroljane]

Even the smartest criminals could not steal a nonexistent gun.

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 is the only alternative I can envisage to the everything-private, gated kindergartens with armed teachers and metal detectors at the Story Room Door, where everyone keeps eternal vigilance because you are still and always at war, and at any moment King George or Immanuel Goldstein will storm in to trample on your liberties.

[Selene]

None of these countries has a higher death rate from gunshots however, than does NRAmerica.

Excellent point...obviously it is much, much, much worse to die from a gun than a knife, club, axe, rope, or, a myriad of other devices.

Brilliant exposition!

Brilliant evasion. It is much, much easier to kill 20 people in one minute by gun, than by club, axe, rope or slingshot.

So under other implements you did not imagine a bomb, I.E.D., grenade, firebomb/arson...

Reuters

1:48 a.m. EST, December 14, 2012 <<<same day as the Conn. horror...

BEIJING (Reuters) - A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

In 2010, a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard in a kindergarten in eastern China.

(Editing by Jonathan Standing)

[Selene]

Carol:

Hmmm let's see four (4) to six (6) box cutters ---- 9 - 11 - 2001 ---- results ----

over 3,000 dead ...[almost 500 per box cutter...]

I apologize you must be correct...

politically that is...

[caroljane]

3,000 dead over 12 years works out to...? per year/

Carol

statistically correct

[caroljane]

Even in the most unthinkable tragedies, there is still tragicomedy. On Solo, Krazy Kyrel and the Dog have assigned the blame for the Connecticut deaths where it rightly belongs, on Communism and Feminism.

[PDS]

Most people who are not Americans do not live in countries that protect inalienable, constitutional rights. It sometimes seems that those who do not have these rights fail to understand their permanence.

Happily, these rights we Americans enjoy are not gifts or privileges grant to us by our governmental masters. We are born with them, whether anybody--in or outside of America-- likes it or not.

Thankfully, our founders decided to enshrine one* of those rights in our Second Amendment to the Constitution, for times just like this, when some would use the abuse of those rights by one of us to justify restricting something such as gun ownership. Whether anybody likes this or not, the Second Amendment to our Constitution does not allow for "quick solutions" to "horrible tragedies." Thank god this is so. The same is true for other rights we are born with as Americans, such as our constitutional right to a jury trial.** For example, juries sometimes get verdicts very wrong, such as with the OJ case. This can lead to further violence, and did. The founders of this country took pains to make sure that "quick solutions" are not available to those who would avoid such "horrible tragedies." The list could go on: the publishing of the Pentagon Papers did not and cannot take away my First Amendment rights, the fact that Mississippi is a shit-hole does not vitiate the Tenth Amendment, etc., etc.

Happily, OJ Simpson cannot, with one or two waves of a knife (not a dreaded gun, mind you), take away my right to a jury trial. It should go without saying that the killing of OJ's wife or Ron Goldman is not being downplayed, or rendered less tragic, by insisting on adherence to the Constitution. Neither can some nut job in Connecticut, with 20+ waves of a gun, take away the rights protected by the Second Amendment. I sympathize with non-Americans who do not have the legal, cultural and historical basis to understand and get this, but it is very hard to sympathize with Americans who do not get this. They are willing to piss away their inheritance with such ease...

*Not all of our inherent rights were even enshrined in the Constitution. See the Ninth Amendment, for example.

**This is also a right that we Americans are born with that others around the world do not understand, or, with few exceptions, share, yet non-Americans would never presume to tell us how to tinker with our jury system when juries screw things up, or an injustice is done.

[caroljane]

Indeed no one but Americans can understand it, nor do outsiders wish to remove your inalienable right to shoot each other at your discretion.

[Dglgmut]

Indeed no one but Americans can understand it, nor do outsiders wish to remove your inalienable right to shoot each other at your discretion.

To whose discretion should it be then? And by what means do you imagine guns can be controlled?

You want certain people to have guns, obviously. And you want certain people to have even more powerful weapons, that is, when you consider the fact that there are guns out there, and there are people out there who'd use them for evil. (You obviously think Canada should have a military, for example.)

So who gets a gun, and who doesn't? You can't say that nobody should have a gun, because your philosophy depends on guns to achieve its purpose.

You can't eliminate all guns. That's not an option. So, who get's them and how do you choose?

[PDS]

Indeed no one but Americans can understand it, nor do outsiders wish to remove your inalienable right to shoot each other at your discretion.

Although this is not really a topic that can be volleyed back and forth by quips, I must respond and confirm that we actually have laws against our citizens shooting each other "at our discretion," Daunce. That's generally not allowed except under very limited circumstances.

Drunk driving is outlawed too, but for some reason, 11,000-plus people were killed by drunk drivers in America annually over the past couple of years. We would need 423 shootings like yesterday each year to simply equal the body count caused by drunk driving each year. You would need one Connecticut-like slaying per day every day of the week, and two on Sundays--every Sunday, mind you--to equal 11,000 annual shooting deaths in America. And yet I have never once heard any outsider (or American) take umbrage at the strange notion that we Americans have the freedom to consume alcohol, seemingly "at [our] discretion."

On a note related to your quip, I see in Canada that somewhere between 30-50% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related, at least within the past 10 years. That's a lot of dead people because of Canada's apparent drunk driving problem. It would appear Canadians have the right to consume and alcohol and abuse that right on a regular basis, all with fatal consequences. Too much freedom and "discretion", perhaps?

As an outsider to Canada, however, I would never wish to remove the seemingly sacred right Canadians clutch to that allows them to drink alcohol at their discretion and kill people with their cars. A horrible tragedy indeed.

My guess is that nobody but Canadians can understand this.

[caroljane]

I was not quipping. I should rather have said, "kill each other at your discretion" rather than shoot. Certainly if I could remove assault weapons and handguns by magnetic satellite from all civilians on earth including policemen, I would. I am conservative in many ways.

We are looking through different eyes. I see dead children who but for technicalities, might have lived. You see an imperishable ideal that despite the dead, the broken eggs, must live.

[PDS]

But rights are not mere technicalities, and obviously, the dead children are not mere broken eggs.

You have constructed a beautiful sentence, but I am afraid it posits a false dichotomy.

[Selene]

I was not quipping. I should rather have said, "kill each other at your discretion" rather than shoot. Certainly if I could remove assault weapons and handguns by magnetic satellite from all civilians on earth including policemen, I would. I am conservative in many ways.

We are looking through different eyes. I see dead children who but for technicalities, might have lived. You see an imperishable ideal that despite the dead, the broken eggs, must live.

Carol:

Will you accept as a viable premise that if there were armed and properly trained personnel in that school that there is an excellent chance that not a single child would have been killed because this miscreant would have been stopped before he could get 100 feet down the first corridor?

A...

[caroljane]

No, because armed premises, armed teachers, armed lunch ladies, armed everybody is not viable to me. Arming the children would of course be the most rational thing. It is never too soon to learn to defend oneself is it? Or to learn that one could be attacked by anybody at anytime and must be ready for it? That is just a basic of life? A statistical probability, like it will rain sometime so we must always carry an umbrella, always, and look out for the rain?

[caroljane]

Indeed no one but Americans can understand it, nor do outsiders wish to remove your inalienable right to shoot each other at your discretion.

Although this is not really a topic that can be volleyed back and forth by quips, I must respond and confirm that we actually have laws against our citizens shooting each other "at our discretion," Daunce. That's generally not allowed except under very limited circumstances.

Drunk driving is outlawed too, but for some reason, 11,000-plus people were killed by drunk drivers in America annually over the past couple of years. We would need 423 shootings like yesterday each year to simply equal the body count caused by drunk driving each year. You would need one Connecticut-like slaying per day every day of the week, and two on Sundays--every Sunday, mind you--to equal 11,000 annual shooting deaths in America. And yet I have never once heard any outsider (or American) take umbrage at the strange notion that we Americans have the freedom to consume alcohol, seemingly "at [our] discretion."

On a note related to your quip, I see in Canada that somewhere between 30-50% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related, at least within the past 10 years. That's a lot of dead people because of Canada's apparent drunk driving problem. It would appear Canadians have the right to consume and alcohol and abuse that right on a regular basis, all with fatal consequences. Too much freedom and "discretion", perhaps?

As an outsider to Canada, however, I would never wish to remove the seemingly sacred right Canadians clutch to that allows them to drink alcohol at their discretion and kill people with their cars. A horrible tragedy indeed.

My guess is that nobody but Canadians can understand this.

False analogies deserve false dichotomies. Accidental killings are not morally comparable to intentional ones.

[caroljane]

It seems to be your opinion that laws are of no use in curbing human behaviour, Would we all be better off without them ? I had not noticed that you were a Rothbardian.

[Dglgmut]

No, because armed premises, armed teachers, armed lunch ladies, armed everybody is not viable to me.

Whatever happened to human lives coming before ideals?

[caroljane]

Indeed no one but Americans can understand it, nor do outsiders wish to remove your inalienable right to shoot each other at your discretion.

Although this is not really a topic that can be volleyed back and forth by quips, I must respond and confirm that we actually have laws against our citizens shooting each other "at our discretion," Daunce. That's generally not allowed except under very limited circumstances.

Drunk driving is outlawed too, but for some reason, 11,000-plus people were killed by drunk drivers in America annually over the past couple of years. We would need 423 shootings like yesterday each year to simply equal the body count caused by drunk driving each year. You would need one Connecticut-like slaying per day every day of the week, and two on Sundays--every Sunday, mind you--to equal 11,000 annual shooting deaths in America. And yet I have never once heard any outsider (or American) take umbrage at the strange notion that we Americans have the freedom to consume alcohol, seemingly "at [our] discretion."

On a note related to your quip, I see in Canada that somewhere between 30-50% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related, at least within the past 10 years. That's a lot of dead people because of Canada's apparent drunk driving problem. It would appear Canadians have the right to consume and alcohol and abuse that right on a regular basis, all with fatal consequences. Too much freedom and "discretion", perhaps?

As an outsider to Canada, however, I would never wish to remove the seemingly sacred right Canadians clutch to that allows them to drink alcohol at their discretion and kill people with their cars. A horrible tragedy indeed.

My guess is that nobody but Canadians can understand this.

False analogies deserve false dichotomies. Accidental killings are not morally comparable to intentional ones.

Indeed no one but Americans can understand it, nor do outsiders wish to remove your inalienable right to shoot each other at your discretion.

Although this is not really a topic that can be volleyed back and forth by quips, I must respond and confirm that we actually have laws against our citizens shooting each other "at our discretion," Daunce. That's generally not allowed except under very limited circumstances.

Drunk driving is outlawed too, but for some reason, 11,000-plus people were killed by drunk drivers in America annually over the past couple of years. We would need 423 shootings like yesterday each year to simply equal the body count caused by drunk driving each year. You would need one Connecticut-like slaying per day every day of the week, and two on Sundays--every Sunday, mind you--to equal 11,000 annual shooting deaths in America. And yet I have never once heard any outsider (or American) take umbrage at the strange notion that we Americans have the freedom to consume alcohol, seemingly "at [our] discretion."

On a note related to your quip, I see in Canada that somewhere between 30-50% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related, at least within the past 10 years. That's a lot of dead people because of Canada's apparent drunk driving problem. It would appear Canadians have the right to consume and alcohol and abuse that right on a regular basis, all with fatal consequences. Too much freedom and "discretion", perhaps?

As an outsider to Canada, however, I would never wish to remove the seemingly sacred right Canadians clutch to that allows them to drink alcohol at their discretion and kill people with their cars. A horrible tragedy indeed.

My guess is that nobody but Canadians can understand this.

False analogies deserve false dichotomies. Accidental killings are not morally comparable to intentional ones.

Furthermore if you carry your analogy through, all cars and all guns are equally culpable in the hands of irresponsible or homicidal users. What to do. in practical terms? The car is designed to transport people, the gun is designed to kill them. Better check with the NRA for support on this tough talking point.

[Dglgmut]

The fact that guns are designed to kill people does not mean that: #1 You can wish them out of existence. or #2 There is no benefit of responsible people carrying them for self-defense.

Should people be responsible for their own protection? If not, then who will be responsible? The government... of course.

Will the government do a better job, or even a decent job? I guess it's the (lack of) thought that counts... or the ideal.

[caroljane]

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?

[Dglgmut]

The debate is not whether or not children should be brutally murdered for Christ's sake! The debate is whether or not gun control is a viable solution.

Adam's given you a legitimate option and you've rejected it on emotional grounds alone... You don't like the idea of people having guns. If it were law, your view would be represented officially. Would lives be saved? That doesn't seem to be up for debate with you.

[caroljane]

The debate is not whether or not children should be brutally murdered for Christ's sake! The debate is whether or not gun control is a viable solution.

Adam's given you a legitimate option and you've rejected it on emotional grounds alone... You don't like the idea of people having guns. If it were law, your view would be represented officially. Would lives be saved? That doesn't seem to be up for debate with you.

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.

[caroljane]

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.