"We the People" Murder Individuals

Must be Stupid Article Day at The Atlasphere:

If the end of gun control leads to a bloodbath of runaway shootings, then the Second Amendment can be repealed, just as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist for people, not people for laws.

…

If the public doesn't like the rules, or the consequences to which the rules lead, then the public can change the rules via the ballot box.

Even if armed self-defense did lead to bloodbaths (which it doesn't — where guns are banned, like in Limeystan or Krautistan, the same going postal takes place, just with knives or illegally owned guns), neither the supreme court, nor congress, nor "we the people" would have any right to sacrifice one individual by disarming him and leaving him defenseless to save any number of others.

Stupid collectivist. Goes to show why you can't work with conservatives.

Disarming Successful — Patients Dead

Turning all of Limeyland into a gun-self-defense-free zone did not stop this limey from going postal with his miniature arsenal. Well, as the wisdom of the gun-control-free zone has it, when guns are outlawed, only criminals (including the government's jackbooted thugs) have guns.

At least the limey rulers are more consistent than others by disarming some of their thugs, too. It seems to make them a tad less aggressive. Or maybe the sugar rush from scones is not as bad as that from donuts.

Anyways, if people were reasonable, gun control would be dead now. Moon bats are no more reasonable than wing nuts.

Collateral Murder

Reason and Liberty Central

presents

The Welfare-Warfare State

in

Collateral Murder



Those Bond one liners aren't so cool anymore once you know you murdered some innocent people.

Legalize free-enterprise murder; why should governments have all the fun?

The Sitting Ducks of Fort Hood

Go figure:

When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan started shooting up the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Pfc. Marquest Smith dove under a desk. The Associated Press reports that "he lay low for several minutes, waiting for the shooter to run out of ammunition and wishing he, too, had a gun."

Neither Smith nor the other victims of Hasan's assault had guns because soldiers on military bases within the United States generally are not allowed to carry them.

The other day I thought it would be fun to bet people $10 that they wouldn't storm into a recruiting office with a (painted toy) gun, jump onto a desk, and scream, "Allahu Akbar!"

Thought that would be a pretty surefire way to earn a Darwin Award. Now it looks like you can do it with impunity — at least until the local police arrive.

And I thought the Fort Hood shooting was the exception that probed the rule "if the mere presence of a firearm caused a shooting wouldn't we have large numbers of shootings at gun shows, gun stores, police stations, and military bases instead of at schools?"

Checking your premises reveals that military bases rank with schools, not with gun shows, gun stores, and police stations.

Guns Don't Kill People — Arabs Kill People?

In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting, moon bats called for banning all guns. Wing nuts called for banning all Arabs.

Crowley Should Get Fired

The only reason to have a police force in the first place is that, unlike stereotypical vigilantes, the police are supposedly able to disinterestedly enforce objective laws that equally apply to everyone. That's what the people pay taxes for.

A vindictive agent that bends the law to boost his own ego, to take revenge on some insurgent who insulted him, need not be purchased at the price of tax money. "Vigilantism" like that can be had free of charge.

(In fact, Bernie Goetz is a far better agent of justice than Sergeant Crowley. I mean that seriously, without any prejudice against and with all respect due to Bernie.)

Sergeant Crowley has clearly demonstrated that he is unable to remain disinterested and professional under provocation. That ought to disqualify him as an officer of the law.

If they keep the likes of Crowley as police officers in Massachusetts, they might just as well introduce anarchy and save a lot of money. Crowley ought to be fired now before he gets a chance to ass rape or shoot somebody he doesn't like.

In fact, there ought to be a database for crooked cops like Crowley, a blacklist (excuse the pun) from which any community that wishes to call itself civilized refuses to hire. Furthermore, as long as dishonorably discharged soldiers are denied the right to keep and bear arms, it should also be denied to dishonorably discharged cops. I would rather see bears armed and kept than something like Crowley.

Gates Got Suckered

"Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home." — The Obama

In fact Obama was charitable calling Sergeant Crowley stupid. Obviously, he was applying Heinlein's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.

But I'm afraid, this time around the latter caution is true and it was malice. Crowley admitted as much in his own police report and hoped to get away with it.

By his own admission, Crowley asked a fuming Henry Louis Gates to talk with him outside. When Gates complied, he arrested him for "disorderly conduct."

If there were any truth to Crowley's flimsy excuse that he had to go outside due to the acoustics of the kitchen and his radio reception, he ought to have warned a Gates not fit for polite society to stay behind, in his house. Under no circumstances should he have asked Gates to follow him, inevitably inviting the scene that ensued outside, and that Crowley then called "disorderly conduct."

This is called entrapment. The police inviting you to break the law is always immoral, but Crowley didn't even do it to wage that foolish government-sponsored war on drugs, but he did it to quench his own personal thirst for vengeance. This is called corruption.

Crowley very obviously decided to retaliate against Gates' unruly threat, "You don't know who you're messing with!" So what is a body cop pig to do to get an excuse to shoot or at least use some sort of physical force against an unruly peon?

Much as Crowley may hate it, it's perfectly legal to shout at a police officer in your own home. (Except in Soviet Russia and Prussia, where contempt of cop was a capital crime.)

Crowley also knew he could never arrest Gates for breaking and entering on his own property without the city losing a million-dollar lawsuit. Leaves that catchall charge, that crooked cop's best friend, "disorderly conduct."

But Crowley knew he could only arrest Gates for some barely credible semblance (see below) of disorderly conduct if Gates was in an at least semi-public place. So, knowing or hoping that Gates would not calm down, Crowley lured him outside — and taught "Leroy Brown" a lesson about messing with the man.

Obama should not apologize to Crowley. He should kick him in the ass, so Crowley learns a lesson about how it feels to get abused by an authority figure.

The stilted language in the Gates police report is intended to mirror the courts' awkward phrasing, but the state could never make the charge stick. The law is aimed not at mere irascibility but rather at unruly behavior likely to set off wider unrest. Accordingly, the behavior must take place in public or on private property where people tend to gather. While the police allege that a crowd had formed outside Gates' property, it is rare to see a disorderly conduct conviction for behavior on the suspect's own front porch. In addition, political speech is excluded from the statute because of the First Amendment. Alleging racial bias, as Gates was doing, and protesting arrest both represent core political speech.

A Bed of Thorns

And here's a thorny issue for you: "17 states consider requiring minors to get physician's note for tanning beds" or banning them from using them altogether.

It's a real-life example of at least three things discussed in these pages: Very young children are too immature to judge for themselves. If their parents fail to bring them up to be reasonable individuals, somebody else has to. Generally, the government will presume to be that somebody, but governments are just men elected by the very people supposedly too stupid to take care of their own and their own kids' affairs, and the laws governments pass to solve the problem are usually worse than the original problem. Eventually, restricting peoples' liberty by force of law only escalates a vicious circle of violence.

Objectively speaking, tanning is about the dumbest thing you can do, right up there with smoking. Like smoking, it both boosts your cancer risk through the ceiling and makes your skin age prematurely so that your face will implode at age thirty. Look at Pamela Anderson for proof (if you dare risk going blind). I have a pigskin bag just like that one.

In a culture that associates tanned skin not with ugliness, as it should, but with beauty, and where teenagers are subject to and routinely give in to tremendous peer pressure, tanning is a disaster looking for a place to happen. And it finds plenty.

The potential for disaster is compounded by the carefreeness of youth (some would call it irresponsibility). As a teenager, you can't imagine that you'd ever turn thirty, that your face could ever implode, that you could ever get cancer, or that you could ever die. On top of that, scientists claim (and I have no reason to disbelieve them) that UV rays and tobacco smoke wreak even more havoc on a body that isn't fully developed yet.

It's of course supremely ironic that bimbos that boost their market value by looking "hot" through tanning (and "cool" by smoking) achieve the diametrical opposite in the long run. Less than two decades later, these two vicious habits will have prematurely aged them so much that it may be next to impossible for them to get a date, let alone get married (if they are so inclined.) Of course, no teenaged bimbo would ever think that far ahead. Talk about burning both ends of the candle.

Of course, sunlight is necessary for your body to produce vitamin D, which among other things apparently fights some cancers. However, that only requires about a quarter of an hour's worth per day, and no full-body tanning. Besides, you can get vitamin D from pills just as well.

All told, banning tanning sure would seem to make more sense than banning smoking weed. On the other hand, it makes far less sense than banning drunk driving or smoking tobacco, activities which can easily harm innocent bystanders, and not just the bimbo engaging in them.

Ultimately, trying to reason with teens and explaining the consequences of their actions to them would of course be much better than a threat of force. At the end of the day, they have to learn how to think logically, so they might as well learn it now.

True, reason will be lost on very many bimbos. That, however, may be a moot point: A person who in her teens cannot be brought by force of reason to abandon peer pressure and short-term thinking will earn herself a Darwin Award sooner or later anyway.

When the chips (and the sun) are down, nothing short of a change in culture can be truly effective in matters like these. No ban, no reasoning will do much good as long as their peers lead kids to believe that smoking, drinking, or tanned skin is cool. The worst possible consequence of a ban would be a black market for tans like today's black market for drugs and fake IDs.

It would be interesting to make a cost-benefit analysis on a teen tanning ban: How many people would just ignore such a ban? How many would ignore reason but obey a ban and thus be saved? How many of them would put their new lease on life to good use and in the end be grateful for having been "saved from themselves," and how many of them would learn nothing, but just find another way of earning a Darwin Award? And how many would be pushed over the edge by another authoritarian restriction and go postal, and how many would they kill?

And don't forget to take the skin cancer knowledge test. Knowledge is king, man.

What to Do against School Shootings

Still, there is one thing you can do against school shootings: You can teach children nonviolence, or rather, nonaggression. Problem is, you are hypocrites and kids can smell the stink of a phony ten miles against the wind.

You can't be a beacon if your light don't shine
…
How can you ask for the truth
When you do not truthful live
…
How can you ask a child to be honest and true
When he can only judge what's right by what he sees in you
How can you offer vision, yet walk around blind
No, you can't be a beacon if your light don't shine

— Donna Fargo

An average parent does infinitely more harm to a kid than the "worst" video game. If you want kids to be nonviolent, you have to stop initiating the use of force against them. What do you expect them to learn if you initiate the use of force against them for having sex, for smoking weed, for not wanting to go to school?

Of course there are some rules that are necessary and need to be enforced, like rules against murder or (non-statutory, real) rape. But 99.99% of all rules, laws, and regulations are pointless and only tools for wing nuts and moon bats to force respectively their "morality" of death and their political correctness on their disarmed victims. What do you expect kids to learn if at every corner force is used against them for no good reason whatsoever?

You say you have to force kids for their own good? Then I'm afraid every now and then one of those lovely pressure cookers you call home will go off with a big bang, as it must. In that case, I can only hope your teachers and security guards are well-armed and ready for battle.

School Shootings Are Good

Well, not really. Who likes to get shot? But it did get you reading.

Thomas Jefferson had to say this on that issue:

And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

True, Jefferson wasn't exactly talking about school shootings, but about Shays' Rebellion. But what is a school shooting if not a miniature rebellion?

School shootings are not caused by guns or video games. The fact that guns don't kill people is proven by the string of school shootings (and fittingly, stabbings) in Krautistan, the country with the most fascist gun laws outside Limeystan. Violent video games can't be the culprit, either, because there have always been violent media, like Bond movies or, before that, movies and books whitewashing violence, like Gone with the Wind.

But precisely books like Gone with the Wind are the answer to what teaches violence to kids. Culture and media always taught violence to kids. The difference is in the kind of violence that kids were taught and that people got as a result.

Back then, times were even more collectivist than today. Accordingly, kids were encouraged to engage in collective violence instead of individual violence. Instead of first person shooters, there were books and movies glorifying slavery, war, and genocide. Accordingly, that was what people got back then instead of individuals going postal.

People and particularly kids were taught that murder is good, and is only good, if the murderers are regimented into gangs called nation states and armies, ruled by big bad evil guys called heads of state and henchmen called generals. Accordingly, they had more world wars and fewer school shootings.

Read Tom Sawyer for a taste of the abject respect kids had for authority figures like judges and generals. (To their credit, they liked pirates, too.) For a real-life example, look at the history of Krautistan, particularly the time between circa 1866 and 1945.

Krautistan, 1914:

"Thank you, Officer Pig, for arresting me and locking me into this here cattle car. I'll be glad to ride to the Western Front and murder as many frogs as I can before they murder me."

Krautistan, 1941:

"Thank you, Officer Pig, for arresting me and locking me into this here cattle car. I'll be glad to ride to Auschwitz and take a shower."

You say that couldn't happen in America?

America, 1863:

"Thank you, Officer Pig, for arresting me and locking me into this here cattle car. I'll be glad to ride to Gettysburg and murder as many Yankees as I can so your slavocrat bosses can keep their slaves."

Teaching kids to obey authority is just plain wrong and will always result in disaster. There can never be such a thing as "rightful authority." Authority is by its nature wrongful.

Authorities consist of men, and laws are written by men. There is no process for reliably selecting rulers wise enough to rule — and give orders to be blindly followed by — other men.

In the olden days, the people played genetic roulette and bred incestuous aristocrats to rule them. The result was degenerate subhuman mass murderers like George III and Wilhelm II.

Then the people tried voting for the village idiot preferred by the majority. The result was even worse: demagogic subhuman mass murderers like Hitler. (Full disclosure: Hitler didn't get a majority, only a plurality, but by the rules of the democratic process, that was enough for him to take over.)

A system that might work better is plutocracy, which would allow the most productive, and thus generally the most reasonable, to rule. However, even that would be far from foolproof. Think worthless heirs. Think rich fundie businessmen that are good enough at compartmentalizing to use reason in business and faith in their politics and private affairs.

The only path to tomorrow is liberty: Every individual must think for him or herself, and act accordingly.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

— Thomas Jefferson

Either people obey all the time, or they rebel at least sometimes. If you teach kids to obey the authorities, they will obey when ordered to collaborate in wars and genocides. If you teach kids to think for themselves, they will rebel against what they think is an outrage, a judgment you may disagree with.

Whether these rebellions are justified depends on the degree to which the rebels are rational. But no matter how rational men are, they can never be perfect, and thus there will always be misunderstandings, and thus rebellions, wars, and other instances of use of force that are questionable or just plain wrong. There will always be students and other people who believe that their situation is so intolerable as to warrant running amok.

Nowadays people don't want the horrors of authoritarian rule they have seen, but neither do they want the freedom, the "anarchy," that is the only alternative. The result is a strange middle of the road mixture of exhortations to question authority and exhortations to obey authorities.

Nowadays, we expect soldiers to refuse orders to murder frogs or Jews. But it obviously makes no sense to ask teenagers, if drafted, to question orders to murder people in a war, but to otherwise obey authorities. Today's semi-fascist mindset becomes obviously preposterous when one realizes that teenagers who, if drafted, have to make decisions about others' lives and deaths need to put authorities above their own minds on comparatively minor issues like drug use or school attendance.

You can't ride in the middle of the road forever. Sooner or later, you're bound to hit a gatepost inscribed "Arbeit macht frei." After every act of anarchic rebellion, the shocked survivors call for more fascist gun control and censorship laws that pave the road right back to the concentration camps.

You can either teach kids to obey authority, or you can teach them to think for themselves. If you teach kids to think for themselves, inevitably every now and then one of them will come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that it's time to hoist the black flag and begin to slit throats.

School shootings are the price of liberty. Oh, you don't want liberty at that price?

Well, there's another saying sometimes attributed to Jefferson: "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

"Give me liberty, or give me death" is no empty rhetoric. It's a physical choice like "give me oxygen, or give me death." If you decline liberty, you automatically choose death for yourself and everyone around you.

If people never rebel, they always obey. It's either the occasional school shooting or Auschwitz. Make your choice.

The Cause of School Shootings

Wonder why there are school shootings today while there don't seem to have been any until some decades ago?

Is it that there are so much more guns? No, there aren't.

Is it that guns are easier to get hold of? No, they aren't.

Is it that these days children don't get spanked and don't get brought up to be little fascists? No, how can bringing up kids to be murderous jingoists counter school violence? How can treating children like the human beings they are, deserving liberty and dignity, cause school violence?

Maybe back in the wing nuts' "good old days" children had the discipline to kill only when sicked on another army by the proper authorities? And these days they individualistically kill whomever they feel like?

No, there's only one reason, and only today's moon bat induced hoplophobia can blind the majority to the obvious.

This gentleman's got the answer pinned down:

"When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that's when all of these shootings started," Thweatt said. "Why would you put it out there that a group of people can't defend themselves? That's like saying 'sic 'em' to a dog."

Hear! Hear!