From: Michael Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Jan 22 2001 - 08:26:03 MST
denis bider wrote:
>
> James Rogers wrote:
>
> > Of course, a total "buyback" in the U.S. would be an extraordinarily
> > expensive endeavor, considering the number of guns in circulation
> > (hundreds of millions); I'm not sure that people would be willing to pay
> > $100+ Billion in taxes to allow the government to buy/take everyone's
> > weapons.
>
> > Legislating a total ban without compensation on something that most
> > everyone owns and that was expensive to purchase is a stupid and assinine
> > policy. This isn't even about guns; it is flawed in principle applied to
> > any material item with a similar profile.
>
> Firstly, I concede that what I teased you with is probably unworkable in a
> society like the USA. But it's not stupid; it's just unworkable.
>
> Beyond that, your argument is a bit funny in its own right. You say that
> "everyone has firearms". So if there was a buyback, the government should
> pay for these firearms. But who pays the government to do it? The people do,
> obviously. The same people who have guns would pay themselves the price to
> let go of the guns. :-) On a larger scale, this scheme is economically
> equivalent to just taking the guns away at no compensation.
Not quite. Making the citizens who are willfully not armed pay those who
are to disarm is a quite acceptable libertarian solution, since fair
economics demands that externalities be paid by those introducing them
into the economy. If those who are wilfully unfree want those who are
not to give up their unfree status, they must PAY for it, assuming those
who are free are willing to sell their freedom. Make no mistake: so long
as there is government and police forces, an unarmed person is not free,
they are merely tolerated.
>
> You see, the problem your society seems to have is that you are in love with
> firearms, 100 years after there shouldn't be any rational use for them
> anymore. At the time your founding fathers set up the constitution, America
> was a cowboy land. Sure, you definitely needed a shotgun at that time, as
> many of them as possible. But that time has passed, has it? You now have
> gun-wielding cowboys passing through New York and San Francisco, and I think
> that's just a little bit misplaced.
Oh, I don't know. If it were not for firearms, I'd imagine a lot more
than just 6-12 million people would have been gassed and incinerated a
half century ago (a large chunk of which would have been your
countrymen).
>
> One day when you get around to it you might want to rethink that part of
> your constitution. [As well as the electoral college part, I might add.]
I don't think so. The electoral college is one of the important safety
valves that protects us against the mobocracy and demagoguery that
caused the doom of Athens and Rome. I even think that we should rescind
the newer amendment that eliminated the Governor controlled appointment
of Senators. The difference between our society and yours is the same
difference between Sparta and Athens: both have flaws, we just don't
structure our society to lower itself to the lowest common denominator
(yet), as Parliamentary systems like yours (and most all of europe) do.
They are little but popularly elected dictatorships, petty
fasco-socialist governments with good PR.
>
> No offense intended - it's just that a society's rules need to develop along
> with the society. Although a conservative pace of development is usually
> beneficial as far as the law is concerned, you seem to be stuck in a hole
> with no way out: Johnny grow up with guns, Johnny emotionally attached to
> guns.
This is standard fascist claptrap. So if you thought that if society had
evolved beyond the need to have free speech (when such speech is
obviously a danger to an 'evolved' society), religion (when such are
obviously wrong), assembly (who needs to assemble when we can all
communcate via the web?), against search and seizure (if you are an
honest person, what do you need to hide? If everything we do for society
is to its glory and not our own, then 'seizure' is a meaningless
concept), against self incrimination (if you didn't break a law, you
must not have anything incriminating to say, right?), then its obvious
that the whole idea of freedom is obsolete, according to you, and we
should all just jump into our pods and join the proto-matrix of fascist
/ socialist propaganda and control.
>
> Of course, I may be wrong. Maybe guns are good. But I sure don't want to
> live in a neighbourhood where every lunatic has one; I prefer a
> neighbourhood where the most they can do is punch you in the face.
I want to live in a neighborhood where people are so polite and
respectful of others that there is never a need to punch someone else in
the face. My gun toting community is that (the only fight I have ever
been in outside of combat was in a city that had gun control).
>From the stats I've cited, its pretty plain that the crime problem inthe
US is with those segments of society that distribute and use drugs
(legal and illegal) to a very high degree, and who are also highly
dependent upon welfare programs. This behavior indicates a large degree
of individual irresponsibility. One reason I'm not terribly opposed to
drug laws is that drugs are a tool by which an individual can give up
their self control, avoid their responsibility. Individuals who turn to
drugs tend to suffer from incidents in life that stripped them of their
confidence in their ability to be responsible, whether real incidents
like death, accidents, sickness, or artificially induced things like
propaganda, discrimination, prejudice from others. This denigration of
the individual sense of self, and trust in the individual by others is a
vicious cycle that destroys the institutions of a truly free and open
society. It is a practice well known and taught in ChiCom and other
marxist / leftist revolutionary methodologies: destroy trust in the
individual, institute government controls to restrain individual
freedoms, create oppression, generate widespread real or perceived
disaffection, then start the revolution. None of this can work until you
disarm the individual who is most likely to oppose the revolution.
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