Ten random (ranting?) thoughts about guns and gun control

1. Many years ago, someone in an email group tried to corner me. Aha! You've never touched a gun, but you expect us to respect your opinion about gun rights? I think I expressed bewilderment about why I'd be criticized for tolerating something I know nothing about. Because really, how is it better to be in favor of regulating or prohibiting something I don't know or understand? Should ignorance be the foundation of the law? 

I've never been an interior decorator either, but far be it from me to say the law should require a license to be one.

Never been into flower arranging. But I say there shouldn't be a license.

Some state laws disagree. Am I being "extreme" to say let people do the job they want?

Or own what they want?

2. Funny who and who isn't a gun nut. Michael Bloomberg when Mayor of New York wanted police with guns to enforce a law about the size of soda fountain drinks. President Obama wants federal agents with guns to force restaurants to post calorie counts on menus. They want guns to be used on offense to coerce people. I want people to be free to possess and use guns in self-defense.

And I'm the gun nut?

And there are politicians who want the police to use guns to prevent the presence of guns where alcohol is served.

Richard Maybury believes in two laws. The closer a society or government adheres to them, the more order there is. The more they are ignored and supplanted by other laws, the more chaos there is.

Those two laws are:

1. Do all that you have agreed to do.

2. Do not encroach on other people or their property.

When The State encroaches on private property, chaos ensues. No one knows what would have happened if the Pulse nightclub in Orlando allowed its customers to pack heat. But we do know what happened when "government" made it illegal for them to do so.

3. Gun rights advocates, don't go down the "mass shootings is a mental health problem" road. The mentally ill are the most helpless and harmless people in society. They don't shoot up places; if and when they do lash out at others it is in the most ineffectual ways.

4. The problem with guns to protect us from tyranny is the subjectivity and self-interest of the gun owner. If someone refuses to sign up for the draft, that right there is a hill I'd be willing to fight on in defense of that young man (or now, probably, woman). But America's 100 million gun owners have tolerated Selective Service for decades.

5. If it is possible to manufacture guns in residential homes, and it is, then they will certainly be made under gun "control" or gun prohibition laws. Gun Control is about creating a black market.

6. I'm losing patience with saying people have "good intentions" or that the results of their folly are "unintended." A crackdown on guns will NOT prevent mass shootings; it WILL lead to piling up of charges against African-Americans, Hispanics, and immigrants of brown skin. They'll be targeted and profiled, just as they are now in the War on Drugs.

7. The Second Amendment is largely irrelevant. Whether this clause qualifies that clause doesn't take away the fact that no person, or group of people called "government" has the right to deny your right to defend yourself. Human rights don't depend on Constitutions, and the right to life and the right to self-defense are one and the same.

8. Laws aren't about potential. One person's stash of meth can hurt a lot of kids, and another person's one gun can hurt a lot of people. Same can be true of one person's beer supply and another person's car.

9. Those who say the intent of guns is killing humans is like saying the intent of nuclear weapons is to incinerate populations. But defense is more about deterrence than killing.

10. If you think I'm writing in defense of guns because I'm being paid, expose me and follow the money. Please. If there's money I'm entitled to get, I'd like to know about it. But this is a matter of conscience for me and almost everyone who writes in defense of self-defense.