Date sent: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 02:07:35 -0800
From: Anton Sherwood <bronto@pobox.com>
Organization: That would be telling.
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: more fascist frothing
Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> "Joe E. Dees" wrote:
> > Howzabout THIS for not only pejorative, but irretrievably true?
> > The cruel and cynical actions of the NRA,
>
> namely?
>
Blocking ALL gun-related legislation, however reasonable.
>
> > as distinguished from their
> > Madison Avenue bullshit spindoctor-manufactured Hollywood (Prez
> > Charleton Heston? Yagottabekidding!)
>
> Why? You reckon Heston doesn't really know how to shoot, or something?
>
He and his good buddy Wayne certainly know how to cram their
feet so deeply in their mouths that they cut their throats on their
hangnails. Even Dubya Bush is distancing himself from their most
recent fits of heartless paranoid logorrheic slander.
>
> > image, would lead one to
> > necessarily believe that the voting majority of their members are
> > soulless ghouls who have perpetual hard-ons for and wear their
> > emotionally overwrought and bleeding hearts on their sleeves for
> > lifeless and engineered-for-the-express-purpose-of-death-dealing
> > hunks of metal,
>
> To pick a nit - the *purpose* of most guns is not to kill but to
> threaten, as in "Let go of that nice lady before I do something
> permanent." The threat, to be effective, requires the *ability* to deal
> death; but the ability and the purpose are not the same thing. "The
> most effective weapon is the one that need never be used."
>
It depends upon who buys the gun; that's NOT why muggers buy
them. I wanna keep guns out of the hands of people who would
threaten myself or my family; the NRA doesn't, because the fear
engendered by having such vicious criminals and crazies armed
persuades people to buy guns and join the NRA.
>
> > but cannot muster a shred of sympathy for dead little girls.
>
> For every dead little girl who makes headlines, there's another (and
> another and another) who is alive because a gun was available. You
> would condemn them, and feel good about it because they were bludgeoned
> or strangled rather than shot.
>
"If only she'd had a gun of her own..." The cartoon I referred to now
spouts from your mouth. Murdered little girls are typically
kidnapped by perverts and killed in private, where no guns can save
them.
>
> Forgive me if I don't see what's so damned superior about you because
> you can't appreciate the value of a reliable defense.
>
I not only appreciate its value (I own two handguns, two rifles and a
shotgun), I recognize its limitations. It will not protect you or your
family against a treacherous backshooting criminal or a random
sudden crazy, which is why I want weapons kept out of their hands.
>
> > They DO sociopathically, and quite obviously, care
> > more for killing machines than they do for their fellow human
> > beings, although to call the rest of the race their "fellows"
> > slurs the rest of humanity by association with pond scum.
>
> (I'm reminded of Huxley's retort to Wilberforce.)
>
Wilberforce this.
>
> > It might be
> > impolite to call sick, twisted, demented and bloodthirsty
> > ("PLEASE, Lord, lemme meet a mugger today and legally kill 'im!)
> > psychopaths what they are, but the truth, by definition, can
> > NEVER be an insult!
>
> When I bought my first gun four years ago, my then housemate (a life NRA
> member who taught me to shoot) said, "Congratulations. May you never
> need it."
>
> He goes to the range every Sunday; he is quite fond of his Dirty Harry
> piece, and has had more than one occasion to show it to a mugger. (His
> former place of business, a bookshop, was in a seedy neighborhood.)
> They fled at the sight, so he didn't need to fire it.
>
> Across this great land, similar encounters happen about a million times
> a year, by every credible estimate. (Low end about 0.6 million, high
> end about three, if memory serves.) What would you prefer?
>
That the mugger not be armed as well, and blow your gun-flashing
head off.
>
> Okay, I confess, every time I take public transport and have a gun with
> me, I imagine what I might do if that creep from the Long Island
> Railroad were to appear. And sometimes I fantasize about getting the
> drop on Gianluigi Ferri, who shot eight people in the building where I
> now work (a year before I started there). Guess that makes me one sick
> fuck, eh?
>
Yeppers, just like the character De Niro played in "Taxi Driver".
> --
> Anton Sherwood *\\* br0nt0@p0b0x.com *\\* http://www.jps.net/antons/
>
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