I like that you presume I'm a leftist and I have tactics. It's kind of like being in a movie or something. — Baden

You mean... stutter, stutter, you aren't? You don't? Oh, woe is us.

but I think it would be damned hard for the American military to take over if they wanted to. — Sir2u

Were I running the coup d'etat, I would recommend that the troops NOT fight it out with the citizenry on a block by block basis. There are much simpler ways of bringing the masses to their knees:

1. drastically reduce electric power; let local government allocate limited power to water supply, sewer pumps, hospitals (or cut it off altogether, if need be)
2. cut telephone/internet communication
3. ground airplanes (like on 9/15, only longer)
4. Sharply reduce ground transportation
5. Block radio signals

All of these actions can be taken without pointlessly killing a lot of people or destroying infrastructure, and can be eased off or leaned on, as needed. Conflict will probably arise around generation plants, major transmission switches, and wherever road and rail blocks are established -- generally, well outside of residential areas.

Power and telephone/internet cuts and sharply reduced ground transportation will produce real post-apocalyptic sensations which will reduce the entertainment value of revolting against the government to a minimum. Hot spots can be kept on ice longer, as needed.

Were the The Kardashians trashy when Deep Space 9 conceived Cardassians??

So, if I agree with you that the founding fathers wanted an armed citizenry, provided the citizenry wished to be armed, can you see the sense in placing a ceiling on the kind of arms that the citizenry can have?

It is not in the interest of the state or the citizens to have well armed and totally unregulated thugs running around armed with all sorts of guns and ammunition of varying lethality.

You objected to cannons; are cannons above the ceiling? What about armour piercing bullets -- spent uranium points, for instance? What about rockets (not ICBMs, of course -- I think there are zoning ordinances that rule out missile bases in people's back yards) like the kind that the Taliban and lots of other insurgents use? Are they over the top? If the citizenry need to defend themselves against the government, surface-to-air missiles would be handy for keeping the air free of government attackers.

Dune introduced the concept of family atomics. Maybe the Bush clan would want an atomic bomb at some point, or perhaps Trump's real estate operations would need to clear a slum quickly. A big bomb would save time and money.

A most helpful list of quotes. These strike me as more compelling, when one wants to defer to authority, than the Second Amendment.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. — Noah Webster, 1787

Tiff probably has this tattooed on her arm.

It remains to be seen whether this is true today -- one hopes it will not be put to a test. If the hundred million (give or take a few million) Americans were to revolt and turn their guns on the military, I am not sure they would win.

It is an axiom of the left that it is best to not take on the military of the state, especially a well armed state, because state armies tend to be better at violence than unorganized citizens.

EDITED

Guns were needed for hunting and protection of livestock from wolves, foxes, etc. Guns were needed for the defense of or attacks on people -- but mostly as defense. Bow and arrows were also used for the same purpose. All that, granted. But what wasn't present -- as far as I can tell from reading American literature, is that the possession, use, and valorization of gun ownership as a topic of discourse is a very recent phenomena, as is the public discussion about gun control.

Can you cite a founding father (or founding mother) to the effect that every American should own a gun--outside of the 2nd amendment? Is there an old draft of the Declaration of Independence that starts out "now, in the course of human events, it has become necessary for every man to get himself a gun and periodically wave it around to make sure everyone knows he has one and to strenuously set forth arguments and reasons for a gun to rest in every hand..."?

... The reasoning typically given (other than the standard: "god told us to mutilate our genitals") is that it reduces the risk of contracting STDs (there was a circumcision fad in the 80's that promoted that idea). — VagabondSpectre

It would have been a fad if there wasn't actual evidence. As it happens, there is. I'll explain, but just to make it clear, I'm not arguing in favor of religious or routine infant circumcision.

For circumcised penises, the exposed glans and skin below the glans is dry, and slightly thicker. An intact foreskin helps populate the surface of the glans (and itself) with white blood cells which fight infection. As it happens, those white blood cells are the target of HIV. Removing the foreskin largely eliminates the white blood cells, and a slightly tougher surface is less likely to provide openings for the virus.

Mass adult circumcisions can be done using double-ring devices which fit around the penis on the inside of the foreskin, with a tight ring on the outside of the foreskin placed over the inner ring. The effect is to strangulate the foreskin, which tissue dies and falls off in about 7-10 days. It's not very painful and fairly safe. Yes, complications can occur. The advisability of using this technique depends on cost-benefit analysis. There is little risk and little suffering in the procedure, but great suffering and cost from developing AIDS. In many parts of the world, the chance of HIV infection and then developing AIDS is quite high.

This procedure would not be used primarily to prevent STDs, other than HIV.

Ordinary surgical circumcision is quite safe but requires much more skill and tends to be painful.

Threads aren't supposed to be merely long strings of PMs.

You passed over my serious post about the NRA to bite the joke bait.

The point I was making was that THIS discussion is but one of many that result from political engineering, using the NRA and the gun industry. Towards which ends "a gun in every hand" might be targeted would be a better topic. Personally, I suspect a certain variety of conservative harbors a wish to destroy relatively peaceful communalism and replace it with a certain kind of openly hostile individualism that requires guns to maintain itself.

That clearly isn't an appropriate means of self-defense. The average citizen didn't own a canon to protect himself. — Thorongil

Pachelbel's Canon has little self-defense value, true. Krupp's Cannon, on the other hand...

Isn't DNA physical information?

Surely we could use 18th century cannons, then -- a well regulated militia would have a few of those on hand. They weren't very precise, but a 2 inch cannon ball from a colonial era cannon could pass within a foot of one's head and cause a concussion from the shock wave. Of course, if it went through one's head, or through just about anywhere else, it would be a grim prognosis.

Just how big is the Gun Business in the US?

Good summary at the link.

The debate about gun rights has a history.

Guns are nothing new in the United States; many of us grew up in regions where hunting was common and lots of people owned and used ordinary rifles and shotguns. There were also handguns, which of course were for not for hunting game. In the 1950s--even with all the paranoia about communism--there was very little (if any) talk about gun rights. The 1960s were busy with dead Kennedys and dead civil rights leaders, the summer of love, hippies, Vietnam, the Great Society legislation, and the Democratic train wreck in Chicago. It wasn't until the late '70s, post Richard Nixon, a spike in crime, New York City near bankruptcy, and so on that a group of conservative insurgents staged a coup d'etat at the NRA convention that gun rights became a "thing".

Under the new conservative leadership, the NRA became proponents of gun rights, second amendment fetishists, and were dedicated to the normalization of guns in public and domestic settings. The new NRA with 5 million members, a 100 million dollars for lobbying, and a very focused agenda was able to bump stock the whole conservative movement forward.

Sure, there have been some dramatic mass shootings. Yes, it's appalling that nearly 600 people have been shot with handguns in Chicago this year, so far. But the reason this debate is taking place here is that it has very much been ARTIFICIALLY INSEMINATED into politics by the conservative NRA and Republican Party.

People kill on a massive scale with guns like assault weapons because guns like assault weapons are made for that purpose. Where is the science that specifically addresses those specific propositions? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Forensic science.

Delete "pudding" and the expression comes out right. Vanilla is the preferred flavor the world over, pretty much.

Whatever turns you on (or off). On several occasions I've found having an audience (they weren't taking notes) to be a nice added feature.

I mean, clearly they [political science, sociology, economics, psychology] can be studied in more systematic ways than art or literature, but something tells me they fall short of the label of science. — rickyk95

The behavioral sciences have taken some deserved hits to their reputations lately. Valid results should be duplicable, for instance. A survey found that many psychology results could not be duplicated. As it happens, a lot of research in the biological sciences (which are "harder" than behavioral science) hasn't been duplicated, either. Good science is hard whether it's physics or economics.

Human beings are one of the main problems in behavioral science. Studies of behavior in rats and pigeons have produced solid, replicable findings about how rat and pigeon' brains work. Many of those findings are applicable to human beings. If we conducted research on human beings in exactly the same way we conduct research on rats and pigeons, we might nail down some answers to difficult questions. That kind of research has (quite properly) been ruled out of bounds.

Even a relatively small ability to think; even limited freedom of will; and that softest and most elusive topic of research -- mind -- all get in the way.

Take for instance research into cooperative behavior in dogs and monkeys. Researchers discovered that both dogs and monkeys pay attention to the rewards their cooperating partners are getting. If some dogs see that they are getting no rewards (while other dogs are), they stop cooperating with the researcher. If monkeys see that their cooperating partners are getting better rewards than they are getting (pieces of apple instead of pieces of cabbage) they stop cooperating. Unexpected end of experiment. What the researchers discovered is that their captive subjects were capable of feeling cheated, and would then not play any more.

It is worth noting that economists generally can not predict economic crashes. Or, at least, that is my understanding. They can't, or they haven't. Lots of people -- economists and kibitzers -- thought that housing prices were absurdly high in 2006-2007, but nobody predicted near economic collapse and a credit freeze in 2008.

Geologists can't really "experiment" with plate tectonics and earthquakes because the subjects -- these big continental and oceanic plates -- are way too big. They can observe them, however, and make predictions. The world economy is a similar problem: it's too big, too many moving parts, and all those parts are always moving.

A lot of psychology research looks like slop to start with, but even if it is very, very good, there is still the problem that human beings can, and regularly do deliberately misrepresent themselves, can fake cooperation, lie, dissemble, refuse to cooperate, and so on -- all of which undermines the validity of psychological research. Any study which involves self-reporting is practically doomed.

Studies of sexual behavior (like the use of condoms, frequency of sexual encounters, preferred sexual activities, etc.) that are based on self-reporting are notoriously unreliable. As it happens, it is quite difficult to observe all of these behaviors. Most people don't like having a note-taker in their bedroom while they hare having sex. Where observation has occurred, the findings are often quite different than self-reporting.

Why don't you give your dog beef bones? a 6 inch marrow bone has nutritious marrow (which your dog will lick out of the bone in a day or two) and then the bone will last quite a long time--years. Most dogs won't be able to crush the bones (they're pretty thick) so there won't be bone splinters in their gut.

America is founded on mass murder. It's not an inexplicable aberration, but business as usual. — unenlightened

America was founded by the English, who began the slaughter of Indians and enslavement of Africans. Stephen Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature) names the English cavalier class who established the southern colonies as the source of the southern values which resulted in high rates of violence in the south.

The British Empire, let us remember, was not an humanitarian operation. You all have been capable of quite brutal behavior. And, of course, I'm glad you have reformed your ways and became a peace-loving nation, after several hundred years of murderous, exploitative colonialism. How many people died during the Irish Famine? About a million, and then you got rid of two million more Irish through immigration.

The United States is a big country (3.8 million square miles) and 320 million people, not that size explains violence. It does, however provide the basis for significant differences around the country which have historical bases. This map shows the varying rates of violence in North America. Those parts of the country under the more benign influence of Puritans and NW Europeans (Germans and Scandinavians) have the lowest rates of violence, generally. The south has the highest rates--not just a little higher--they are a lot higher.

If you live in a northern tier state, you would probably be living in an area with murder rates only slightly higher than western Europe. Louisiana and Mississippi are a different matter.

Location, location, location. If you live in the NE part of Chicago, you will hear of very few murders in your neighborhood. If you live in the South Side of Chicago, chances are you will be related to a murder victim. So far there have been 545 homicides in Chicago (as of 8 October, 2017). There are still 83 days left to break last year's record, and if they put their minds to it, they probably will.

MURDERS ARE DOWN! — fishfry

Murders are down from the peaks between the 1970s and the 1990s. Our "base line" before and after the peak years is still higher than many countries'.

Everyone will die; 6,300 died in the last hour. Death is death. Big deal?

The are expected deaths (heart attack, cancer, infection, stroke, etc.) and then there are "excess deaths". The excess is death from preventable, unnatural causes--like murder, car accidents, and so forth. Mass shootings are "excess death". Death from flying debris in a tornado or hurricane are expected. That why people are evacuated before hurricanes hit -- deaths are expected.

Our thinking on this is too far apart.

You are talking about how information about anything becomes available to the mind, and you are right: memory. A very few people who have had traumatic injuries lost the ability to form permanent memories. What Henry Molaison, known by thousands of psychology students as "HM," didn't know before brain surgery, he couldn't learn later. Well, technically, he could hold names and faces together while he was with the person, but if they left the room, he forgot them, and had to be reintroduced when they came back in. He was able to manage simple way finding. He had normal intelligence and a pleasant personality. But for the most part, he lived from the age of 27 to... something like 75, without learning anything new.

However, I was nought talking about memory. I was talking about the evidence that there is a past, which is a different problem than how we acquire information and store it.

Then what? — Rich

My memory could only go back 71 years -- which is pushing it. Let's say 65 years. If memory was the only means by which I could think there was a past, It could nought go back further than 1952. How do I account for my parents? Did they spring into existence sometime in the late 1940s? More likely, they existed before I was born, and they have memories that go back to the second decade of the 20th century. At least, they reported having memories of WWII, the great depression, and so on.

This is obvious. There must be some other means to determine that a past exists:

other peoples' memories
spoken records
written records
pictures and photographs
geology - fossils, studies of rock displacement
archeology - artifacts
biology - cladistics, genomes, observation, pollen studies
telescopes
etc.

Finding clam shells in sediment at 10,000 feet in the mountains tells us that either someone went to a great deal of trouble to plant signs that the mountain had risen high above the level at which the sediments were formed, or the rock was pushed upwards.

Finding fossils in rock that is 200,000,000 years old (based on other studies) tells us that EITHER animals were alive 200 million years ago, OR that same somebody with a lot of time on his hands must have put them there--presumably to screw with our minds.

Everyone has a different point of view of shared events. That is why there are disputes in sports about who did what. Before multiple TV cameras entered the picture -- so to speak -- the only POV that mattered was the umpires's view. The number of relevant POVs is now larger. Disputed rulings can now be disputed.

The Holocaust, the launch, first voyage of, and prompt sinking of the Titanic, building St. Peter's Basilica (started in 1506), the reign of Charlemaign, the Emperor Augustus, pyramids of Egypt, and so on are events that had multiple accounts from various points of view.

Further back in time -- say the first building of Jericho (8000 years ago) -- there is on the POV of the object itself, but the object reveals facts such as it's age. Farther afield, a 10,000 year old stone skin scraper found in an archeological dig tells us this part of the world was occupied. Fossils in North Dakota tell us Tyrannosaurus rex walked the earth, there, 100 million years ago. We can reconstruct the original pangea by looking at very ancient rocks, and noting how the spreading sea floor puts distance between one place and another.

Almost all of the past is beyond everyone's memory. But that's OK because we don't base our knowledge of the past on memory.

Therefore I think it is of profound importance to ethics to maintain the reality of the past (and the future). — darthbarracuda

Darth, you should know from several episodes of Star Trek that the Time Line can not be altered. If you attempt to change the future while you are in the past, disaster will ensue.

While one can play interesting games with the past, the present, and the future, I agree that these three time zones should be taken as real, however inconvenient that might be.

I don't know why you are clinging to luck with such tenacity. That isn't how you made it into the big time, is it? My understanding was that you were persistent, industrious, smart, and had no major liabilities (in your personal nature).

Doesn't luck favor the prepared mind?

Sure, good fortune, luck, or a timely intervention can turn people's lives from likely mediocrity to likely high achievement. But one still has to cooperate with lady luck.

For which statement do you want scientific proof?

History tells us that the National Rifle Association has, since 1977, sought to normalize guns in public and private settings, by seeking to have laws that limit the use of guns struck down or repealed. They have been really very successful. The NRA has been spending up to $100,000,000 per year on selected conservative candidates (they don't bother supporting democrats). This has had concrete results in national and state legislation. weakening -- or eliminating -- controls on gun usage.

There are, according to informed reports a range of 1 gun for every American to 1 gun for every two Americans. Neither all, nor 1/2 of Americans hunt game. Most of these guns are for target practice, collections, or for defensive or offensive purposes. This is a matter of extensive public record. So also is the rate of death from gun violence. There isn't a strict correlation of 1.0 between guns and gun deaths, but there is some correlation. And we know that if one doesn't have a gun in one's hand, one can not shoot somebody with it.

My thesis -- that the number of guns in circulation, and the slight control on who buys all kinds of guns and accessories contributes to gun violence is supported by public health researchers. Naturally, there are other factors besides the guns themselves. There is the price of guns and ammunition; there are the social factors of lax law enforcement in ghettos which allows multiple-killers to get away with their crimes; there is the history of social deprivation and abuse.

If you were a carpenter and 60% of your work was being thrown away, you still get paid; Is your answer still yes? And if so, where does purpose come into the formula for the happiness of the human. And if most of our work is for naught, then is our purpose naught too? — Frank Barroso

Carpenters, plumbers, communication satellite designers, dishwashers, etc. all provide work in exchange for wages. Chances are, if 60% of a carpenter's, plumber's, satellite designer's, and a dishwasher's work was rejected, you'd be out of a job at the end of the day.

Some jobs, like social work, psychiatry, teaching, etc. do not get great results much of the time, and we understand that psychiatrists, for instance, can not 'cure' schizophrenia. They can only "help" the schizophrenic -- but he doesn't stop being schizophrenic.

Your OP, and my response, was predicated on measuring 'good works', not job performance. Many good works fail for the same reason that psychiatry fails: the conditions that cause severe problems are just very difficult to 'cure'. A 45 year old man who dropped out of high school, is barely literate, has no sought after skills, is going to do poorly--no matter what. Doers of good deeds and county workers can help the guy, but they can not turn him into an affluent entrepreneur.

A chronic alcoholic and drug abuser will not do well in this world either -- and there is little that can be done to make him or her do well. The best we can do is limit the damage. That's not very satisfying, in terms of return on good works. But limiting the damage is very worthwhile. There is a housing program not far from where I live for "public inebriates". These are chronic alcoholics who simply can not stop drinking. The goal of the program is to provide clean, warm housing with supportive services, and the residents can continue to drink--they are just much, much less likely to die from exposure, lose extremities to frostbite, and so forth. Plus, their existence is more dignified. They are cared for.

There are some programs that do much better than 5%, 15%, 35%. even 65%. Feeding programs (meals on wheels, for instance) have high high rates of success -- that is, the meals get delivered 5 days a week, plus food for the weekend, at a fairly low cost. Public health immunization programs often reach 95% success rates.

I will try and put it into practice all the time. — Hachem

As Yoda said, "Do or do not, there is no try."

IF 50% of your good intentions end up leading to bad results, you should consult a specialist to find out if you are in the wrong universe.

A more likely scenario is that many (say 60%) of your good acts end up accomplishing nothing -- nothing good, nothing bad. Is it worth continuing to do good. Yes.

Perhaps you need to improve your giving and good acts. Giving $100 to the Cancer Society might accomplish nothing. $100 to a cancer research laboratory might accomplish more. Preparing a good meal for 40 people in a homeless shelter might not house anybody, but it will leave 40 people well fed, and they will feel better about life.

Giving $25,000 to Harvard probably won't make much difference. They already have a huge endowment. Giving the same amount of money to a state college tuition scholarship would probably make a much larger difference.

True enough, good acts can go awry, but usually they don't.

Just shows that the American tradition of gun ownership is part of the country's history, — fishfry

That's right. Hunting for meat was de regueur in until the frontier closed in the 19th century. Lots of people still hunt. I'm fine with hunting. But the United States did not have a "gun culture" until about 1980. No gun deaths before 1980? Sure there were. Bootleggers and major crime figures (think Al Capone) were often armed and dangerous. The NRA changed in 1977, allied itself with conservative interests and embarked on its present program of normalizing guns in just about any private or public setting. (Previously it had focused on gun safety courses, stuff like that.)

The interpretation of the 2nd Amendment had, up until the 1970s, applied to militias (like the national guard). The People had a right to organized defense through arms. The fairly conservative
Chief Justice Burger said that interpreting the 2nd Amendment to mean that every individual is entitled to carry guns is "stupid".

Now this is a fact not commonly realized among contemporary people, but back in those days, you know those cops and Klansmen and southern redneck racists? The were all Democrats. — fishfry

That's right. In the 1960s, there was a 4 way split in the parties. There were southern Democrats and northern Democrats. There were liberal Republicans (the 'Rockefeller wing) and there were conservative (Goldwater) Republicans. The liberals of both parties eventually threw in their lots together, as did the conservatives of both parties. There wasn't much similarity between the Democratic Farm Labor Party in Minnesota and the Alabama Democratic Party.

JFK and LBJ were in no position to authorize black civil rights agitators to arm themselves before they went into the deep south. — fishfry

"I'm alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms," declared John R. Salter Jr., the civil rights leader who helped to organize the famous sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi. "Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine," Salter recalled. "The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay." — fishfry

At least in 2005, John R. Salter Jr was alive and well and living in Idaho, so his son, John R. Salter III says.

It's worth mentioning that Salter is white. The Mississippi police viewed him as a loathsome "outside agitator" but it would have been safer in the early '60s for a white man to carry guns in Mississippi than a black man. Of course, once he opened his mouth and revealed his Yankee accent, he would have been dead meat. Also, many of the freedom riders were practicing non-violent resistance. Why non-violent resistance? Because oppressed people understand that the State, and it's sometimes-allies like the KKK, are much much better at violence than they are.

That's why leftists who have any brains don't plan violent revolutions in America. Start a violent revolution in America and you'll be in the morgue by sundown. The State is powerful, better armed than anyone else, and has the law (it is the law, more or less) on its side.

You wish to take power away from the individual. The US was a country built on the rights of the individual. That's what the pro-gun people see as being at stake. — fishfry

The rights of the individual is part of the American tradition -- and the English common law that our legal system is based on. Pretty much everyone more or less honors the concept that the individual is more important than the collective. The pro-gun people haven't claimed any unique ground on this issue.

Indeed, I would say the gun lobby is no more interested in the individual than any one else is. The NRA (and some much smaller allied groups) have a narrow interest: the normalization of a gun in every hand. Why they wish to achieve that end is something of a mystery to me.

Gun rights are not one of my hobby horses — fishfry

Thanks for your response. Actually, it isn't one of mine either. I don't own a gun (but I think target practice might be interesting). What interests me here is the politics, sociology, and psychology surrounding guns, and how it has come to pass that the NRA has managed to be so successful in it's mission. Even the NRA is against gun stupidity. How it is that we can have a string of attacks, and yet Senator McConnell doesn't want to "politicize" the slaughter in Las Vegas --as if slaughter wasn't already political.

Feel free to challenge any point you want. Sure I do have feelings about gun violence (who doesn't, whowouldn't?) but I am approaching this as an intellectual, not as a ranting zealot. (I belong to no anti-NRA groups, no anti-gun groups; I don't subscribe to any anti-gun or anti-NRA publications.)

I've been mugged a couple of times--robbed, not bashed--and I didn't wish I had a gun at hand.

There was a good discussion on the NRA, the American terrorist group, on Fresh Air tonight. Terry Gross interviewed Mike Spies, who writes for The Trace, a publication about gun violence.

The fellow interviewed made three very important points:

#1, the goal of the NRA is to "Normalize guns in public". They want people to get used to, and accept as normal, seeing guns everywhere. They want no "gun free zones".

#2, the NRA is like a religion, or a way of life. The 5 million members of the NRA believe in the importance of guns; that an armed society is a safe society.

#3, gun carryers can now buy insurance (Chubb is the large insurer offering the policies) that will cover your legal fees should you kill somebody (in an act of "self defense" and be sued. That way, you won't be bankrupted if you kill somebody under the Stand Your Ground laws.

Most states had "duty to retreat" laws say, 15 years ago. People were expected to retreat in the face of a threat, rather than resort to violence. Stand Your Ground laws reverse that principle.

My take away: The NRA should be considered a subversive, and terrorist organization and treated like the KKK.

How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? — unenlightened

Don't be silly modern feminists can't change anything.

How many real men does it to change a lightbulb?

None. Real men aren't afraid of the dark.

"The best way to a man's heart is through his hanky pocket with a bread knife" - Jo Brand

One dumb blond was calling out to the dumb blond on opposite shore.
"How do I get to the other side?"
"You already are."

I started to google "feminist..." and it filled in "lightbulb jokes". True story.

Q: How many Americans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? — MikeL

I don't know, but how how many screwing Americans can a lightbulb take?

The "left" has a more 'collectivist' approach, and generally thinks that the government should keep the peace. The "right" has no time for such nonsense and is armed and dangerous. You're probably right. We can, perhaps, afford to lose 10% of the left. That's what decimated means - 1 in 10. deci.

Some people are alive today because they were armed and were able to defend themselves. Many more people are dead today because they were armed and were pierced by a bullet before they had time to shoot their assailant. Even more are dead who had wielded their guns and were shot by somebody else first, and a lot of people are dead, whether they had a gun or not, because somebody just up and shot them with or without a good reason, or was aiming at person X, missed, killing Y instead.

Shoot before you might be shot is part of the logic of guns. Shoot first and sort out the bodies later is part of the gun logic. Shoot, shot, shit.

Hmmm, so describe yourself philosophically. — MountainDwarf

I came from a religious, "idealist" milieu, and have in my later years adopted a much more secular, pragmatic, consequentialist approach. It is very difficult to expunge years of religious training.

Philosophy, as such, hasn't interested me much. Abstractions, complicated arguments, difficult terminology, too long a reading list to catch up on now (I'll be 71 in a few days). Life is too short. I'm much more interested in literature, history, sociology, psychology, music... I can play the radio, that's about it for performance.

Are you a mountain dwarf as in Trollhagen (Grieg) or the Misty Mountains (Tolkien).

Ahhhh, nice positive uplifting prognostication. I can hardly wait.

If we want to be people who tolerate senseless, preventable violence, there is probably not much any academic, legislator, clergy, social activist, etc. can do to stop the mass murders. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

There is a complete 'disconnect' between guns and consequences. I'm not talking about squirrel, duck, and deer hunters.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday referred to the gunman, Stephen Paddock, as “disturbed,” but said that much of the past 10 years of his life was a mystery. “What we know is Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo and living a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood,” he said.

“Don’t you think the concealment of his history, of his life, was well-thought-out?” the sheriff asked. “It’s incumbent upon us as professionals to dig that up.” — New York Times

"Disturbed"? You think?

"Mystery"? What mystery?

"Secret life"? What secret life?.

The pile of guns and ammunition that Paddock had in his hotel room were legally obtained, presumably, on the open gun market. It's all for sale--semi-automatic guns and 'bump stock' devices to enable the automatics to overcome the deficiency of being merely 'semi' automatics. The only "disturbed" Paddock (instead of the stark raving mad Paddock) had further equipped his rifles with enhanced sites that enabled him to target individuals from a distance of 1200 feet. In addition he had enough ammunition to fire away for what, 9 minutes?

The deployment of his arsenal in Las Vegas follows the logic of the legally sold product: A large share of the 300 millions guns in private hands are designed to kill people--mostly one, two, or three at a time, but more complicated and entirely legal guns are on sale that are designed to kill dozens, and injure a few hundred in just a few minutes more.

At this very moment, Thursday, 12:30, p.m., central time zone, potential killers are browsing the legal, public, socially accepted displays of guns, ammunition, and accessories and are opening their wallets to buy.

Are to suppose that Stephen Paddock is the last person who will follow the logic of the product and that no one else will ever fulfill the purpose for which the (in effect) machine guns are designed--killing lots of people? No.