Ayn Rand on Gun Control

[Brant Gaede]

I gather this photo is for real. It's quite shocking, but thinking about it a bit, in Israel they know there are armed nut-cases nearby who want nothing more than to kill as many people, children included, as possible. Knowing they can't change that context with the stroke of a pen, they deal with it on a more practical level.

Wait a minute, this is different from the situation in the USA how?

I'm pretty sure this woman has had military training, being Israeli.

--Brant

[caroljane]

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.

[Selene]

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.

Yep, not like the city of Chicago which routinely has more deaths by firearms in a week than Newtown had that tragic Friday last week.

Funny how when predominantly black and Latino children are killed by guns on a wholesale basis, each and every week in Chicago, nobody in the O'bama White House goes to vigils, visits with the families, makes speeches calling for immediate action and appears to care.

I wonder why?

Do you?

A...

[Brant Gaede]

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.

Yep, not like the city of Chicago which routinely has more deaths by firearms in a week than Newtown had that tragic Friday last week.

Funny how when predominantly black and Latino children are killed by guns on a wholesale basis, each and every week in Chicago, nobody in the O'bama White House goes to vigils, visits with the families, makes speeches calling for immediate action and appears to care.

I wonder why?

Do you?

A...

White guilt is exploitable.

--Brant

[Mikee]

I gather this photo is for real. It's quite shocking, but thinking about it a bit, in Israel they know there are armed nut-cases nearby who want nothing more than to kill as many people, children included, as possible. Knowing they can't change that context with the stroke of a pen, they deal with it on a more practical level.

Wait a minute, this is different from the situation in the USA how?

Mama Grizzly would approve...

[Selene]

Damn that teacher has a really hot looking ...

uh-weapon?

[Jonathan]

I have been banned from SOLO, sob sob.

Hi Bill.

How are you doing? I just wanted to check in on you to make sure that you're okay. When I was banned from SOLO, it took me quite a long time to get over it, so I know what you must be going through. Please, try to hang in there. The sun will come out again someday.

J

[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.

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.

[caroljane]

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?

[Selene]

And so it begins...

The winner of the completely stupid Utah parents award for this year has just been won...

First, the idiot parents gave their 11 year old a .22 caliber pistol to take to school to protect himself because of Newtown.

Now here is the really stupid part..,

the gun they gave him was unloaded!!!! Lucky they did not get their son killed.

The boy reportedly pulled the gun, a .22-caliber pistol, out of his backpack during recess Monday morning.

“At recess, he pointed a gun to my head and said he was going to kill me,” said Isabel Rios, one of the boy’s fellow 6th grade students.

http://fox13now.com/2012/12/17/west-kearns-elementary-student-brings-gun-to-school/

A...

[jts]

[Selene]

Excellent!!!!

[goblueram]

We’ve all heard of the Columbine High School massacre and the Virginia Tech shootings but who outside of Bath or the Lansing, Michigan area have heard of the Bath School Disaster?

Wow, I had never heard of this, and it is from my home state.

[Jonathan]

If gun bans will create more victims, why then do crime rates not rise when bans are imposed, especially murder rates?

That depends on which data you choose to selectively ignore so as not to disturb your attempt at confirmation bias. Crime rates sometimes do rise when gun bans are imposed, including murder rates.

Is America so exceptional that all rapes and robberies would be successfully carried out unless the victim were armed?

Is America an exception to the confirmation biased fantasy that you've created? Yes, I'd imagine that it is. I suspect that if your theories and "solutions" were implemented in America, and they ended up failing and resulting in more death and damage, you'd selectively ignore the results and stick with your fantasy that it should have worked because it had appeared to work in other instances that you chose to selectively focus on.

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?

You sound like the one who is accustomed to teaching and not learning, and while not presenting any actual data, but rather just making up your own "facts" and expecting your "students" to unquestioningly accept them.

J

[9thdoctor]

Hi Bill.

How are you doing? I just wanted to check in on you to make sure that you're okay. When I was banned from SOLO, it took me quite a long time to get over it, so I know what you must be going through. Please, try to hang in there. The sun will come out again someday.

Betcher bottom dollar, Bill...

[9thdoctor]

Damn that teacher has a really hot looking ...

uh-weapon?

Yeah, the thing that looks kind of like a paddle slung around her bottom. You didn't notice it right away?

[Jonathan]

Hi Bill.

How are you doing? I just wanted to check in on you to make sure that you're okay. When I was banned from SOLO, it took me quite a long time to get over it, so I know what you must be going through. Please, try to hang in there. The sun will come out again someday.

Betcher bottom dollar, Bill...

I was thinking something a little less brash and annoying, like this:

In this time of need, Bill should surround himself with all of us fluffy woodland critters who have met the same horrible fate.

J

[Selene]

I got distracted by her silhouette and I was thinking of employing that sling in some none military manner..

I do know where the photo came from and why it popped up just now.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/how-to-stop-the-slaughter-of-the-innocents/

[9thdoctor]

I was thinking something a little less brash and annoying, like this:

I'm interested in by what metric you determined that that's less annoying.

In this time of need, Bill should surround himself with all of us fluffy woodland critters who have met the same horrible fate.

Yet here he is, stuck on the island of misfit toys...

A water pistol that shoots jelly!

[Jonathan]

Pigero and his bimbo Doug now have a crush on some dude named "Robb" who is said to be the husband of a Magic Perfect Pretend Caveman Dieter.

The bimbo quotes Robb as saying:

"Momentarily, they get a brief cathartic release watching other people "solve" their problems on TV or in movies by shooting, stabbing, strangling or blowing someone up."

Would that include Howard Roark? I mean, I know that Roark didn't blow up any people, but he did intentionally commit the fraud of passing off his work as someone else's in order to work on a project that he knew the owners wouldn't hire him to work on, and which was a project whose existence he was morally opposed to but worked on it anyway because the fun of doing so was more important to him than his ethics, and he blew up the project -- destroyed others' property -- over a mere aesthetic disagreement using the false excuse that the owners did not abide by a contract that they did not have with him.

So, I guess that the Pigero/BimboDoug/Robb solution to school shootings should include condemning The Fountainhead for the violence that it advocates and the cultural damage that it has caused.

J

[Jonathan]

I was thinking something a little less brash and annoying, like this:

I'm interested in by what metric you determined that that's less annoying.

I used the Objectivist method of Objective Esthetic Judgment. That and a Shrillness/Brashness Meter that I bought at Radio Shack several years ago.

J

[Brant Gaede]

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?

Not if they're the government.

--Brant

[Selene]

J.

but worked on it anyway because the fun of doing so

I do believe he said that it was a particularly difficult design problem of efficiency, cost and engineering that he perceived as a challenge.

A...

[Jonathan]

Yeah, in other words, he put the fun of the challenge over its ethical impropriety.

Thus contributing to the culture of school shootings.

But at least he didn't turn into a drunk and piss away his career like Mario Lanza, which was an even bigger contributing cause of the culture of school shootings.

J

[Jonathan]

I think I should also remind everyone that Pigero loves and often promotes Turandot, which, as I've pointed out here, is evil propaganda that seeks to reduce our civilization to bloody savagery. It has a message of anti-values and therefore is the cause of school shootings.

J