The Sandy Hook massacre: guns kill liberty
THE Sandy Hook massacre: Guns kill liberty. Guns make life less risky:
Firman Debrander in the New York Times:
Guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name — that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations: for, guns chasten speech.
This becomes clear if only you pry a little more deeply into the N.R.A.’s logic behind an armed society. An armed society is polite, by their thinking, precisely because guns would compel everyone to tamp down eccentric behavior, and refrain from actions that might seem threatening. The suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly — not make any sudden, unexpected moves — and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend.
As our Constitution provides, however, liberty entails precisely the freedom to be reckless, within limits, also the freedom to insult and offend as the case may be…
Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic:
“I am sympathetic to the idea of armed self-defense, because it does often work, because encouraging learned helplessness is morally corrupt, and because, however much I might wish it, the United States is not going to become Canada.
Guns are with us, whether we like it or not. Maybe this is tragic, but it is also reality. So Americans who are qualified to possess firearms shouldn’t be denied the right to participate in their own defense.”
Charles Crawford in The Commentator:
If anything is potentially risky, the government must ‘do something’. No limits can be placed on the state ‘doing something’. To even think in those terms is callous! Don’t we care about human life, and value it more than ugly nasty capitalist money?
Such clumsy thinking has been promulgated to the glum British public for decades. At the micro level it leads to the pollution of unlimited road-sign installation along pot-holed roads. In the middle it creates endemic health and safety PBN (plastic ball neurosis). On its most massive scale it powers the climate change industry, skewing resources on an unfeasibly large scale.
Is it about about managing risk?
Photo: National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston addresses gun owners during a “get-out-the-vote” rally Monday, Oct. 21, 2002, in Manchester, N.H. Heston.
Posted: 17th, December 2012 | In: Reviews Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
