From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Thu May 27 1999 - 06:33:33 MDT
Craig Dibble [craig@slob-squad.freeserve.co.uk] wrote:
>1) What possible extropian/ transhumanist merit can this pointless slanging
>match have?
Ask Joe; he's the one who's throwing the insults around, most of our replies
have been considered, reasonable and rational.
But more to the point, a society which can't handle people owning a few wimpy
little guns is not a society which will let people have really dangerous
technology like nanotech. The things we talk about routinely on this list
will be demonized and restricted just as much as guns if we let the control
freaks have their way.
>2) Have you pro gun activists got any idea how completley mad you sound to
>non Americans?
Odd. I know plenty of non-Americans who are also pro-gun activists, or at
least sympathisers; most of them are irate gun-owners disarmed by good old
Tony Blair. Modern anti-gun Brits, of course, would have sounded completely
mad a century ago when anyone could carry a gun -- and many did -- and the government's ideal was a rifle in every home to protect against invasion;
a policy whose end would have proved fatal if Hitler had a clue about war.
>but just because something is written in your
>precious constitution or your bill of rights does not mean that it is the be
>all and end all, that it is simply the only thought worth entertaining and
>no alternatives shall be brooked.
So the government employees who swore to uphold the Constitution are free
to ignore it at will when they see fit?
>As such, situations have arisen
>which the constitution was never designed to contend with and it has had to
>be modified.
Indeed. So all the anti-gun fanatics have to do is repeal the Second
Amendment; the mechanism is quite clearly elaborated in the Constitution,
they just have to do it. They refuse, and prefer just to ignore it...
>But excuse me if I am stepping on your
>constitutionally protected toes here, I mean no harm, I'm just curious as
> to
>how you can rationalize this.
I'm curious as to how anyone can rationalise ignoring the very law that the
US government was created under whenever they see fit? You'd be happy if
T.B. just declared himself dictator and refused to hold any more elections
because the British 'constitution' is outdated?
>As for the merit of this discussion on the list, is it something along the
>lines of:
>*I'm looking to the future, but I'll shoot you if you get in my way.
Yeah, Joe is pretty fanatical about disarming us at gunpoint, isn't he? Why
is it that the disarmers are so desperate to kill anyone who disagrees with
them?
Mark
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