From: den Otter (neosapient@geocities.com)
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 13:42:06 MDT
Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> den Otter wrote:
>
> > Anders Sandberg wrote:
> >
> > <snipped some excellent points in order to provide some superficial
> > comments>
> >
> > > I'm a bit worried that the discussions on this list (and elsewhere)
> > > tend to be dominated by less well considered opinions (or what
> > > *appears* to be little considered opinions at least). There are many
> > > people out there who actually think extropians are gun-toting
> >
> > Some extropians /transhumanists have guns yes, and others don't have
> > them but would *like* to have them. However, the majority seems to
> > either not to care about guns, or outright reject them. Whether this
> > is good or bad is another discussion alltogether, of course.
>
> Actually as I recall, in the informal, unscientific, anonymous survey I took on
> this list this past winter, those who admitted to gun ownership out numbered
> those who admitted to non-gun ownership by 2 to 1, and if you included those who
> did not own guns but wanted to in the 'pro-gun' group, of all those who spoke to
> me privately on the issue, around 70-75% were 'pro-gun'.
I suppose that if you did the same test on the transhuman mailing list,
or on ExI-Euro, the results would be somewhat different. Europeans tend
to be rather gun-phobic. It's probably linked to the popularity of
socialism etc, in which the criminal is just a "poor victim of society",
blah, blah, and should be given a better treatment than those annoying
(real) victims. Oh yes, they *hate* the victims, maybe because they
remind them of how the world *really* is.
> Since Prof. John Lott's research of FBI crime stats over many years has shown
> that gun ownerhip conclusively reduces the incidence of crime, while most other
> 'less well considered' policies tend to increase or have no effect on crime,
> that gun ownership is an important extropian theme.
It certainly is. Guns are very useful pieces of technology. By carrying
a gun (and training yourself in it's use) you empower yourself
considerably, having an edge over most thugs you encounter. Objectively
speaking, a gun is a great transhuman tool, but get's discriminated
against because it's related to a "touchy" subject (killing people).
Personally, I wouldn't lose any sleep over shooting an (armed) attacker.
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