Race Relations

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Why would I want to cut my IQ in half?


I think he likes long barrels stuck up his ass.

Your math is in error, Spexx. I'm the antigenocide one here, you are visibly not. Your IQ would rise by fifty to seventy points, were you to shed your hoplophobia.

And your antigun/anti-civil liberties/nanny-state/pro-crime/pro-genocide prejudices show in your second comment, and they besmirch you, leaving upon you an ineradicable odor of death. Growing wrathful against anticrime and antigenocide measures does not bespeak intelligence, but instead, neurosis.

You have no conscious realization of how completely you are shamed by your own words. That doesn't, however, remain hidden from me. You certainly don't qualify to offer me any humiliation, however much you'd like to. I have your measure, and you are not exceeding it. This is what maladjustment does, Spexxvet. Mine is the ascendancy, for as long as I am what I am, and you are what you are.

Turning to some others:

Ali, for several reasons I don't think so. One of them is that the US is a republic, where the source of political power is manifestly the electorate, and that this is that power's proper repository. One aspect of this -- and a grim one to be sure -- is the power of killing. Without the electorate retaining that power, a republic decays into an oligarchy. Not the preferred choice, by a long chalk. A general distribution of killing power keeps power itself on a short leash with a force as relentless as gravity, and to prevent excesses of power, such leashing must never be compromised. We've all seen what happens when it is.

UT: one thing to consider -- as of when do Iraq's houses each have their AKs? During Saddam, or afterwards? I don't know, and I don't think you know either. During Saddam's time, revolts would, I think, have been more successful with an AK in every house, not so? This is why I haven't been much influenced by your example either time you've offered it.

When England had guns all through its society, it also had a crime rate so low that English policemen went about armed about equally with a nightstick and slightly stuffy virtue -- and were effective. It is now widely known that with arms sweep-ups, anyone willing to defy UK gun bans can now oppress hundreds at a stroke, and armed crime is steadily becoming increasingly popular. A highly socially stable place like England would use private arms to about the best possible effect in crime suppression. E.g.: "It isn't done, old fellow, and if you try doing it, we'll bloody well blow you in two." [Goofball Napoleonic reference: But we'll not quarter -- cuttin' ya in twa halves inteet will be enow. (Battle of Quatre Bras)]

Shawnee: you know what? Freud didn't say hardly anything about guns at all. It was something like one sentence in his work on interpreting dreams, mentioned among several other objects including fountain pens and umbrellas, and maybe Zeppelins. The sentence really doesn't bear the kind of interpretations loaded upon it in the decades since.