Reblogged:Anti-Gun Zealots: Please Shut Up

[Michael J. Hurd Ph.D.]

I already know the anti-gun zealots’ talking points on the Orlando gay nightclub tragedy. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be boring.

You don’t need to turn on CNN, MSNBC, or turn to HuffPost. I can tell you what they’re saying:

#1 “It’s a gun related tragedy. Guns kill people. If we outlawed guns, it would not be possible to kill people. So let’s outlaw guns, already. People have nothing to do with it; it’s all the gun’s fault. What are you, a racist?”

# 2 [If domestic terrorism, insert the following here]: “You see? Hate is running through America. It’s Donald Trump’s fault. IF we outlawed speech, and directed our violence against Donald Trump, anyone who supports him, and anyone who objects to Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s ideas and policies, then all would be well. It’s time to outlaw hate speech! Something has got to be done!”

# 3 [If a lone gunman, insert the following here]: See # 2 above.

# 4 [If international, ISIS-inspired terrorism, insert the following here]: “It’s not about Islam. It’s not about religion. It’s about guns. Gays, lesbians and Muslims share status as victims of imperialist, racist white men [like Donald Trump]. Islam means peace and love. Don’t turn your anger on Islam. Turn your anger on guns. Oh, and if you don’t agree, the U.S. Attorney General promises to go after those who engage in hate speech against Islam.”

#5 “Hillary Clinton will appoint the ninth and tie-breaking member of the Supreme Court, who will take care of the gun problem. If you don’t vote for Hillary Clinton, then you are guilty of murder, as well as hate speech. You should be treated accordingly.”

When a drunk driver kills an innocent pedestrian, we don’t call it a “car-related” tragedy. We call it a drunk driving tragedy. Yet with gun-related violence, we fixate on the weapon and completely ignore all other factors (particularly when the shooter is Muslim.)

It makes total sense that progressives are pro-gun control. Progressives are the ones who find a government solution for everything. “There ought to be a law” is their solution to any conceivable problem. If Freud were alive, he’d call it a wish-fulfillment mechanism. I call it magical thinking. It’s all fantasy. It’s a fantasy that some authority figure will somehow take care of us, against all reason, regardless of any known facts. They actually think that if you pass a law making guns illegal, it will stop people who wish to do evil and destructive things from doing those things. “Government has the power to stop it by fulfilling my wish.” Some cherished political hack signs a law in the Rose Garden of the White House, and magically, all is well. (Just like Obamacare, right?) But these are the same people who believe that government can create a vibrant economy, generate first-rate medical care out of nothing, and provide utopia on earth at no effort (except to the hated 1 percent, and they have no rights, anyway). Progressives who inhabit our media, executive and judicial establishment are wrong about virtually everything. Why on earth should we listen to them about guns?

Blaming criminal actions on guns is like blaming financial crimes on money – “If there were no money, financial crimes would not be possible.” Actually, socialists like Bernie Sanders already kind of believe that. Or blaming hateful atrocities (like Nazi Germany, or shoot ups in discos) on the existence of oxygen – “If people could not breathe, we would not have the space in which to do these things.” Actually, the most extreme environmentalists already believe human beings are a blight on the planet. These are not the kind of people from whom we should seek guidance on how to combat crime.

I am sick of the lecturing and sermonizing of anti-gun zealots. “Oh, I hate guns,” they say, with sneering and condescending superiority. The implication is that to hate guns is to hate the kind of violence we too often see take place. What rational person could not detest that horrific violence? But the issue is not guns; the issue is in whose hands the guns are located. The peaceful people who own guns for self-defense are not causing this violence. The people who will continue to commit acts of violence or terrorism will continue to do so, whether we confiscate the guns from peace-loving people, or not.

Stop exploiting the slaughtered, you high priests and priestesses of gun bans. Stop insisting that the only way to stop these things from happening is to repeal the First and Second Amendments. Even if that were true, it would not be worth it to live in a world with no liberty. Totalitarian dictatorships are dull, gray, depressing places. Far more innocent people die in dictatorships than in free countries, or even semi-free countries such as our own.

Terrorists are pushing Americans to give up on individual rights and freedom, to throw away a precious legacy so few in human history have ever enjoyed. If we bow our heads and give in, then that’s on us – not the terrorists.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael  Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1

Check out Dr. Hurd’s latest Newsmax Insider column here!

The post Anti-Gun Zealots: Please Shut Up appeared first on Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. | Living Resources Center.

View the full article @ www.DrHurd.com

[Eiuol]

On 6/12/2016 at 4:53 AM, Michael J. Hurd Ph.D. said:

When a drunk driver kills an innocent pedestrian, we don’t call it a “car-related” tragedy. We call it a drunk driving tragedy. Yet with gun-related violence, we fixate on the weapon and completely ignore all other factors (particularly when the shooter is Muslim.)

This is a terrible comparison. Guns are manufactured in order to kill or maim people. Cars are manufactured to transport people. The tools of force, like guns, ought to be regulated. Cars are not tools of force.

[JASKN]

3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

This is a terrible comparison. Guns are manufactured in order to kill or maim people. Cars are manufactured to transport people. The tools of force, like guns, ought to be regulated. Cars are not tools of force.

Why is intended use the standard?

[Eiuol]

It's what makes something a tool of force. Hammers or screwdrivers could be tools of force, but that's not their essential purpose.

[JASKN]

Circular reasoning.

[Nicky]

Hamilton was played without muskets at the Tony Awards, to "honor the victims". That should teach the evil NRA to stop killing gays...

Edited June 13, 2016 by Nicky

[Eiuol]

4 hours ago, JASKN said:

Circular reasoning.

What is circular about it? If we talk in essentials, we'd want to talk about the essential purpose of anything. You identify weapons from their purpose. Same with anything. That is, intended use is a standard because it indicates essential purpose. So there are tools of force, which should be treated as such. Same with owning your own nuke, or combat-grade weapons like a tank, or more broadly, owning your own private military. These are things to regulate, just as all uses of force are regulated.

[Repairman]

12 hours ago, Eiuol said:

This is a terrible comparison. Guns are manufactured in order to kill or maim people. Cars are manufactured to transport people. The tools of force, like guns, ought to be regulated. Cars are not tools of force.

You forgot to list self-protection as one of the uses of guns. And, for the record, guns, as well as cars, are regulated, for better or worse.

[Eiuol]

They are self-protection because they are tools to maim or kill. To be sure, guns ought not be banned, but it is proper to regulate them if we agree that force is to be controlled. I recall Rand speaking once of gun controls neutrally, though I forget where. I think it is in Voice of Reason. 

[dream_weaver]

Nothing came up in The Voice of Reason on the CD for "control", "controls", "gun", or "guns" that read as if being in favor of regulation.

 

The point Dr. Hurd was making with the automobile was pretty straightforward. It was not about using something for a purpose other than what it was intended for.

When a car is operated by a drunk who kills an innocent pedestrian, or is driven by a sober person intentionally into a crowd of bystanders perhaps killing and maiming several innocent people, or a man proficient with a knife kills one or many, or an axe, or a machete, or a shovel, (if I were in Texas, would I have to add a chainsaw?) . . . how often is the instrument that was wielded held responsible over the individual?

 

Incidentally, when Paul Revere made his infamous ride to warn the colonists that the British were coming, do you recall what the British were coming to impose their form of regulation upon?

[Eiuol]

What did you find though?

Yes, individuals are responsible for using weapons to initiate force. But so is using a nuke, a tank, and so on. Guns are meant for wielding force, which goes into discussion about a -right- to wield force as you see fit. Force is not something to talk about as a right. That's why it is proper to deny vigilante justice, or ancap protection agencies, a right to own a nuke. If we talk about cars, we'd be evading a major difference, since there is nothing -about- cars that makes them tools of force primarily. 

I think you're saying that the British were going to confiscate weapons, which is on its own not a problem, the problem was why, i.e. to subjugate people to obey unfair and improper rules without regard to rights. Revolutionaries and weapons are a bad mix as a threat to rights, and proper to regulate. So, Revere's ride is more like "well guys, the war is starting, the British mean business". It's not like weapons stockpiles were for fireworks...

[Eiuol]

Looks like it was in Ayn Rand Answers. It seems like she had no particular position, or at least didn't commit to -no- regulations at all for guns.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/essays/guns.html

[dream_weaver]

If you concur with Richard Lawrence's findings, his search of the Objectivism CD was not very fruitful and more exhaustive than my initial search delimited as I had described.

The e-store does not return a hit with "Objectivism in Brief".

From the noblesoul link:
The exchange was as follows:

Raymond Newman: You have stated that the government ought to be the exclusive agent for the use of force under objective rules of law and justice --

Ayn Rand: That's right.

Newman: -- and yet at the same time today we see an alarming rise in violent crimes in this country and more and more people applying for gun permits and wanting to protect themselves. Do you see this as a dangerous trend, number one; and number two, do you favor any form of gun control laws?

Rand: I have given it no thought at all and, off-hand, I would say, no, the government shouldn't control guns except in very marginal forms. I don't think it's very important because I don't think it is in physical terms that the decisions and the fate of this country will be determined. If this country falls apart altogether, if the government collapses bankrupt, your having a handgun in your pocket isn't going to save your life. What you would need is ideas and other people who share those ideas and fighting towards a proper civilized government, not handguns for personal protection.

In a question and answer session in 1971, Rand stated:

 I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it's not of primary importance. Forbidding guns or registering them is not going to stop criminals from having them; nor is it a great threat to the private, noncriminal citizen if he has to register the fact that he has a gun. It's not an important issue, unless you're ready to begin a private uprising right now, which isn't very practical.

In a similar session in 1973, she said:

 It's a complex, technical issue in the philosophy of law. Handguns are instruments for killing people -- they are not carried for hunting animals -- and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don't know how the issue is to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim.

 

As far as a right to carry a gun and use that force as you see fit, as with all rights, they are a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. With this in mind, the rest of the quip from "Man's Rights" helps set the context further. " There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life." Each individual man has that right to his own life.

She captures quite tersely in John Galt's speech

"It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.

 

As I read the above, none of it sanctions vigilante "justice", nor revolutionaries (who are not acting as individuals qua individuals). Since I introduced the founding father's fight, the sanction of those revolutionaries arose on the merits of what they were fighting for. Keeping this point clear can help from falling prey to the moral relativists use of "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

It was not in the defense of freedom and liberty that Omar walked into that bar. In the aftermath, the anti-gun zealots avail themselves to the freedom of speech provided by the first amendment to attack the second amendment. I neither share their ideas, nor see them as part of the fight for a proper civilized government.

[Eiuol]

Well, "right to use that force as you see fit" is already not like all rights that are about a right to use your mind as you see fit. My point is that Hurd's article is not a good analysis. It doesn't matter of some individuals will wield force properly. It would be an ancap sort of argument, where it's an initiation of force to deny you to make your own mini-army and you say you won't use it wrongly. What counts is specifying regulations so that self-defense is still possible. 

[dream_weaver]

32 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Well, "right to use that force as you see fit" is already not like all rights that are about a right to use your mind as you see fit.

I believe I said "they are a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context," not just delimited to the actions of one's mind.

34 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

My point is that Hurd's article is not a good analysis.

I find it more self-contained than Reblogged:How To Defeat Islamofascism. Contrary to JASKN's "circular reasoning", your attack of his analysis has been on the single comparison of vehicular manslaughter, where the blame should be placed on the drunk driver rather than the vehicle, to the anti-gun zealots focus on the gun rather than Omar's choice to be the judge, jury and executioner based on his subjective feelings, (Reblogged:Orlando Shooter’s Father Has American Culture Pegged.) I'd categorize it as a "strawman".

48 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

It doesn't matter of some individuals will wield force properly. It would be an ancap sort of argument, where it's an initiation of force to deny you to make your own mini-army and you say you won't use it wrongly.

Ancap? As in Anarcho-Capitalism? I know I'm still wresting with understanding politics, but Rand has it right when she points out that anarchism just relinquishes "governmental force" to the first gang of thugs that happens along.

How would a private mini-army (or well regulated militia), being necessary to the security of a free state, differ in the eyes of the world from an army raised by a government hell-bent on protecting the security of the freedom and liberty of its inhabitants?

Self-defense on the individual level is an extension of individual rights. Forming a group does not create a unique set of rights for that group. That group either extends upholding this moral principle of individual rights for each of its members, or it does not. Does such an extension of this moral principle depend on the private or public status of the group in question?

[Eiuol]

Indeed, you blame people, but we don't just ignore the fundamentals about wielding force... 

Yes, Ancap is anarcho-"capitalism".

Self-defense matters, it's a right, yet you must understand that there is no right to simply use force. Rights are use of your mind as you see fit, except for force. When force regulations are lax, people die - it becomes gang-like where big guns always win no matter who uses them. You can regulate force -and- preserve rights, just as you can ban private militaries without violating rights.

It seems like there is no genuine disagreement here, I just hope you don't liken driving cars to guns as though their failure to be used properly are at all similar.

[Grames]

I will take up precisely the challenge you just threw down.  

There is a proper and improper use of cars as well as a proper and improper use of guns, and the distinction between what is proper and improper in both cases is exactly the same.  What makes an action (with any tool) improper is that it violates rights.  Improper use of an auto kills people and destroys property, the same as a gun does.  

The proper use of a gun and an auto do differ, in that it can be be moral to shoot to kill in defense of life or property while autos are not suited to defending rights in that way because of their size and the energy they have at speed makes them an indiscriminate weapon.  This difference in the proper use of guns and autos is nonessential to matters of law because an objective code of law that concerns itself with defending rights should be written in terms of negatives, i.e. it specifies what is forbidden not what is permitted.

A car driven down a sidewalk is perfectly analogous to a gun used in a mass shooting in that both violate rights.   Rights are always the key to untangling legal issues.  Only human beings have rights, and only human beings can violate rights.  Inanimate objects cannot violate rights because inanimate objects do not have rights, and are not moral agents in any sense.

When a muslim mass murders homosexuals, taking time to discuss gun control is a stupid distraction from the significance of what just happened.

[Eiuol]

I would say it is proper to first consider -what- sort of thing we are talking about before talking about proper/improper use. A gun, by nature of what it is and what it's for, will always implement force when used. A car, by nature of what it is and what it's for, won't need to implement force. Proper use of a gun includes using force of some kind, proper use of a car includes no use of force. So, I don't see why a gun and a car deserve equal treatment as tools in terms of law.

I liken it to nukes or private militia. If those things are proper to be regulated, so would guns. If you also agree private militia are not permissible, I'd like to hear you explain why the same logic doesn't apply to say that in principle guns may be regulated. The only question after that is pragmatic considerations of effective laws that still allow for self-defense. If I used your logic, I would conclude that -all- governments are improper, i.e. I can't be denied my choice to form expansive means of force and defense.

Gun control is not a distraction if the tragedy is literally due to force gone amok, in the same way I'd predict a warzone rather than utopia in anarchy.

 

[Grames]

Eiuol, a handgun can be used for target shooting as a sport, killing snakes out in the bush, to make a loud noise as a signal,  and other uses which are proper by my definition: they are not instances of initiating force that violate another's rights.  So your claim that  "A gun, by nature of what it is and what it's for, will always implement force when used" is not true.  The "always" does not hold.  Furthermore, not all instances of  "force" are wrong.  Initiations of force violate rights, but retaliatory use of force can be proper even by a gun used to shoot to kill.  The Ayn Rand Lexicon entry for 'self-defense' has Ayn Rand writing that "All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative."  

"Force bad, outlaw it and everything that makes it possible" is not good reasoning.

Guns and cars deserve equal treatment as tools in terms of law because the law should be strictly concerned with forbidding actions that violate rights, actions of persons.  

Private militia are permissible, and have been used to help enforce the law in America's frontier past.  Only when private militia exceed the law or conspire to overthrow the law by force can action be taken against them.  To outlaw them a priori is to violate the rights of people to peaceably assemble in free association.  

And then there was The Battle of Athens, Tennesee, where the corrupt local law enforcement regime was justifiably brought down by the use of force via an informal militia.  Neat story, it happened in 1946.  

There are private individuals and organizations that own tanks and fighter planes from World War 2, some are kept in working condition.  I have no objection to that.  Even a nuke could potentially be used for a peaceful purpose, but nukes are still too expensive and radioactive contamination too much of a civil liability for non-governmental nuclear weapons to be a practical issue.

Expansive means of force and defense are not incompatible with government until they start to displace government.

 

[Eiuol]

Sport is of course a way to use a gun, so there are a class of guns I think would be best off unregulated. But they work for hunting because force is how they operate. It's just that sometimes force violates rights - proper use of a gun as a weapon requires you to use force. The "always" is a context of a fundamental purpose to a tool.

To be clear, I agree it would be bad reasoning to say outlaw what makes force possible, as force is the most effective way to address its initiation. Self-defense needs tools of force. But my concern is at the same time, there is no right to using force as you wish. There is a specific set of force to use that is legally permissible. So when by and large a handgun is for using force, it's important to make sure force will be wielded properly. A car requires no force for proper use, so it makes little sense to "make sure" it won't be used as a car bomb.

More importantly, isn't use of force intended to be relegated to the government? We'd allow gun ownership for self-defense, especially since responses aren't immediate outside yourself. But, insofar as a degree of force is relegated, some regulation is required and expected. Outlawing is going too far.

I suppose private militia are okay, but again, because militias are -for- wielding force, some regulation is necessary. As far as nukes, banning those is proper (exceptions for mining asteroids if that were possible) because of their destructive capacity.

If you're going to say expansive means are only improper if they're starting to replace government, that sounds like you are agreeing with me that some regulation is required. It suggests you only disagree on what regulations are practical, or your "threshold" for regulation is a lot higher than mine.

I never heard of that battle, I'll need to read up on it.