Very well stated. This is exactly the material that should be presented to secondary school kids (and higher) in civics class, but it has been traded for "Social Studies" because studying the diverse cultures of other countries is obviously much more important than thinking for ourselves and our way of life.
The only people who ponder what you've stated here are idealists, and we are being broadly painted as kooks and fanactics.
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
Funny, but this sounds like a phrase I've often repeated when explaining -- or at least attempting to explain to the unenlightened -- the benefit of keeping guns in the hands of private citizens: a gun unfired is a gun well-used.
Maybe there is a better way to say it. This is your area of expertise, and not mine. But I know from first hand experiences that the very presence of a weapon more often than not precludes another victimization.
The bottom line for me, living as I have most of my life in a densely urban area, is that it is supremely obvious that the opportunistic criminal has far more common sense than the average believer in gun-elimination propaganda.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2004/06/violence-and-social-contract-in.html (3 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Very well stated. This is exactly the material that should be presented to secondary school kids (and higher) in civics class, but it has been traded for "Social Studies" because studying the diverse cultures of other countries is obviously much more important than thinking for ourselves and our way of life.
The only people who ponder what you've stated here are idealists, and we are being broadly painted as kooks and fanactics.
Keep up the good work. I enjoy reading your page.
"...and a de facto police state will exist."
If you want to create a police state, create a need for it.
And then feed the need.
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
Funny, but this sounds like a phrase I've often repeated when explaining -- or at least attempting to explain to the unenlightened -- the benefit of keeping guns in the hands of private citizens: a gun unfired is a gun well-used.
Maybe there is a better way to say it. This is your area of expertise, and not mine. But I know from first hand experiences that the very presence of a weapon more often than not precludes another victimization.
The bottom line for me, living as I have most of my life in a densely urban area, is that it is supremely obvious that the opportunistic criminal has far more common sense than the average believer in gun-elimination propaganda.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>