From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Sun Dec 21 1997 - 10:48:33 MST
OK Folks, Here are the final numbers:
rabid gun owners: 20
total guns owned: 114
"Would if they could" non-owners, pro gun rights: 8
Non-gun owners, and happy that way: 8
Now, I don't happen to know how many subscribers there are to the list.
If Max or someone could post a total number, I'd appreciate it. All we
are trying to measure is if there is a greater percentage of total
subscribers who are gun owners than the percentage found in the general
population.
Using the stats for the US, in which 60 million of the 250 million
citizens are gun owners (this includes children and little babies, bed
ridden oldsters, and everybody in prison, so there is a sizable
percentage who aren't capable of owning a gun), we would have to have at
the very least 84 subscribers to even seem to disprove the test
statement, and this does leave out anyone so protective of their privacy
on this list that they have not even thought that a private reply to me
was safe.
I would like to thank everybody who took part in this and associated
threads this week. I personally think that the numbers show that
extropian posters, those who are active participants, tend to be pro-gun
to a far greater degree than the population as a whole, so I think that
this might also be included in any description of extropians, as having
this tendency.
I personally view gun ownership as part and parcel with my Libertarian
beleifs/opinions, and not just as a part, but as the guarranteeing right
which creates all other rights for the individual. As previously posted,
I think that history has shown, and this has been confimed by even the
most heinous statists, like Mao, that, in his words,"Justice comes from
the barrel of a gun". With a world where such tyrants still exist,
conspire, plot, oppress, and rule, it is a moral imperative that any
free thinking individual support individual gun ownership, and posess
and be knowledgable in the use of guns and other weaponry.
Political rights, authoritiy, and power are thought to be derived from
one of two sources: a) as granted by God, which is known as the Natural
Law doctrine, and from which tyrants throughout history have used to
support the "divine right of kings", as well as that supported by the
framers of the American Declaration of Independence and its
COnstitution, and b) from the exercise of force by individuals willing
to fight and die to gain such rights, authority, or power, either for
themselves, or for the group of people they represent. Since
Libertarians around the world tend to also be athiests, especially
non-American Libertarians, I cannot understand any justification for a
libertarian atheist to not support the force doctrine, and givne the
nature of Libertarian philosophy, which holds that all power and rights
derives from the individual, I cannot understand how any Libertarian
atheist can not support the right of the individual to keep and bear
arms. ANything other than this seems extremely hypocritical to me.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?
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