To start with, the US Constitution is in fact non-binding .. like wedding vows, it has been broken so many times and in so many ways by our government that it really is “just a piece of paper” in addition to that, my being born here does not mean I gave my consent .. duh.
[Please research Lysander Spooner’s monumental essay “The Constitution of No Authority.” ]
Contracts need at a minimum two signatures:
“.. Under more appropriate and restrictive definitions, police kill more Americans in just one year than mass shooters have in several decades. Moreover, school shootings present an even smaller risk than mass shooting more generally. As a matter of fact, the American student is today safer in the classroom “than at any time in recent memory.”
Choking on your food, for example, is much more likely to end your life than is a mass shooting, to say nothing of the risks associated with activities like driving in cars or swimming. In the wake of a tragedy, no one likes to hear such facts, as they seem to minimize the pain and loss of the survivors and the families of victims.
The hypocrisy of gun control advocates is striking, or it should be; obsessed with the extraordinarily small risk presented by mass shootings, they strain at a gnat yet swallow a camel. They plead for gun control—really disarmament—for the dominated as they exempt the dominators ..”
Bingo!
Thinking about one position on gun “control”:
The proponents of gun control, broadly defined, seem to believe that private citizens with firearms are likely to pose a danger to society, while agents of the state (e.g., soldiers and law enforcement officers) will act justly and nonviolently, using their weapons only to protect the innocent. If we take seriously the idea that the incentive structures surrounding individuals bear on their behaviors, then this assumption appears untenable, for agents of the state, when they commit violent attacks and injustices, are rarely held accountable for their actions.
The data speaks for itself. Those with badges have a conviction rate in the extreme single digits.
The non-conservative, radical advocate for gun rights contends that the normative questions surrounding gun ownership are far more important than the legal questions
Far, far more as the legality of hiding a Jew in The Netherlands during WWII in German occupied Holland was indeed a crime BUT it was the right thing to do. [I hope you know the story about Anne Frank]
Unarmed people are usually slaves:
The egoist writer and publisher Dora Marsden deftly captured this point:
What profit can a labouring man feel in voicing any desire to be his own master when he sees himself at the apex of a triangle which broadens out to its base in serried rows of armed men, each with his rifle, bludgeon and lash raised threateningly at him? As the mildest-mannered policeman would tell him, to do so would be “asking for it.” That an unarmed populace under a government possessing an armed force is in a condition of slavery, is a fact which shouts. To be free is to have the power to treat on equal terms (emphasis added).
Free or slave, that is the question .. and the weakest among us are the widows, single women and single parents that find them in some rough spots in life where defending life itself, even sacrificially, is the “right thing to do” .. regardless of the “law”.
Gun control advocates who point to Parkland and say “never again” are the humanitarian with the guillotine, their misplaced righteous indignation sweeping away all other concerns. They can’t consider the dangers that inhere in their position because the position is a matter of faith, of religious certitude. Crafting policy as a response to a school shootings is a lot like crafting policy as a response to the September 11th attacks: informed more by fear than fact, scare tactics than good sense. Politicians, overeager to do something to respond to tragedy, are prone to enact “solutions” that are worse than the problems themselves. The desire for “safety” at any cost—for perfect safety of an unattainable kind—leads to policies that make us more unsafe, vulnerable to a more powerful and dangerous enemy: the security state. Because it neither appeals to emotion nor offers an easy fix, this standpoint is unlikely to grab many headlines—unlikely to compete with the righteous indignation of well-meaning high school students. When tragedy strikes, libertarians are often in the uncomfortable, unenviable position of saying that politicians and government ought to do nothing. Looking at the state without the rose-colored glasses of ideal theory, government is just an institution of violence, its actions entailing more costs than benefits. During times of tragedy, when emotions run high, it’s worth reminding oneself of this.
Bingo .. again. This article earned 2ea “bingo’s”
