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Guns and Control (Part 3)

So,

One thing that I have learned while standing outside the cage labeled “False Dilemma” watching the unfortunate zoo animals trapped within is that it doesn't take a whole lot of mental acrobatics to dismantle most of their arguments, such as the one for stricter gun control laws. In fact, it takes no effort at all because they will do all of the work for you.

Awfully kind of them.

Isn't it?

The proposed "solution" to the "problem" (maybe the cage should be labeled “Hegelian Dialectic”) of gun ownership follows the same absurd thought process as so many of their arguments:

1. People with guns are dangerous.

2. Dangerous situations should be avoided or prevented.

Therefore, we will issue guns to people to prevent people from having guns.

Ummm, http://youtu.be/j9ndS6yu3Kk

Yes, yes you are.

As is the norm with these Pavlovian creatures and their close cousins, the sociopaths that see the contradiction but propose the “solution” anyway, the proposed “solution” immediately violates the stated goal of the proposed “solution”. As soon as they issue the first gun to a person, they have done the opposite of preventing people from having guns. If they had a solution that didn't involve issuing guns (or other, even more dangerous weapons) to people in an effort to reduce the number of guns owned by people, that would be different.

How about this? After we issue guns to people to disarm people, we issue guns to the disarmed people to take the guns away from the first group that we issued guns to.

I think you are now qualified to vote in the next presidential election.

As you can imagine, going around stealing guns from people carries with it a certain amount of risk.   Even if violence and threats of violence weren't the habitual choice for gun control proponents as an ironic "solution," it's fair to say that arming robbers who have orders to steal guns would be necessary in order to carry out the plan.

The plan of arming people to disarm people?

I can't quite put my finger on it but something doesn't sound right with that plan.

Truthfully, many of the people arguing in favor of this "solution" are ignorant of the absurdity that they are spouting. They have been raised to view USA, Inc. as an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, ethereal entity with superhuman powers, which is free of the ethical bounds of mere mortals. In short, to these people, USA, Inc. is a god.

According to Mittler Romney, corporations aren't gods, just regular people.

Maybe he meant to say, "Corporations are personages, my friend . . . of course, they
are."

I could probably write several posts on the ramifications of this belief and the benefits gained by the rulers and their subjects by participating in this religion but for this post, it's enough to note the existence of the belief. Deifying the rulers' corporation causes a mental disconnect which blinds people from the reality of what they are truly saying. It's what leads to the most clichéd question asked when discussing freedom with a statist.

"Who will build the roads?"

"Well, who's building them now?"

"God."

They have grown so accustomed to referring to this abstract concept of government as an actual physical being with supernatural powers that they have forgotten that it's just a corporation that employs people to accomplish things.

In the name of god.

Amen.

Any "solution" they propose to deal with a "problem" they have with people is going to have those same people utilized as part of the "solution."  This obvious contradiction undermines any argument they may make and makes the rebuttals in Part 1, while still valid, completely unnecessary.  The simple answer to calls for stricter gun control is, "So, let me get this straight, you're going to issue people handguns, assault rifles, sonic weapons, energy-directed weapons (heat rays), armored personnel carriers, tanks, and who-knows-what-else weapons in order to take weapons away from people?" 

Not people, the government.

Who are reptilian aliens?

The argument is ludicrous but these people have apparently made a vow not to ever be outdone as holders of the Guinness Book of Records for Absurdity.  Guess which people they want to give the guns to?  The same type of people who have killed over 10,000,000 people in the last 75 years, employees of the US government.  Now, I don't know about you but if I suddenly became demented and decided to impose my will on over 300 million people, I would still hope that my ideas sounded like they might possibly be in the vicinity of Rationalville.  Employees of USA, Inc. and despots receiving billions of dollars in US tax money each year probably kill more people in one month than nonemployees do in an entire year.  The plan proposed by gun control advocates is actually:

People with guns are dangerous.

Dangerous situations should be avoided or prevented.

Therefore, we are going to say, "Screw that!" and issue guns to those people with a predilection toward violence or who have been so fully indoctrinated into the religion that they will blindly follow orders to commit violence against innocent people . . .

I don't know the rest.  What motivates these people is beyond me.  I'm still guessing that it's because their high priests tell them what to do and what to think.  It's clear that it has nothing to do with rationality, reasoning, logic, or facts.  Perhaps it's the combination of obedience to their religion along with the emotional delivery of the message.  Employees of USA, Inc. killed more children at Waco than were killed in Sandy Hook and they do this all the time all over the planet.  Shouldn't gun control activists be advocating for control of those people? 

It's against their religion.

If they did that, their souls may be condemned to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity.

Or until they starved themselves to death to escape the brutality of people employed by the US government.

Guns and Control (Part 2)

So,

In part 1, I discussed two rebuttals by gun owners in response to calls for more gun control laws.  In part 3, I'll point out the inherent absurdity of the proposed gun control "solution" but today, I'm going to discuss the rebuttal from gun owners that I find lacking and the reasons why I find it wanting.  One of my reasons is fairly common sense and the other shows how gun owners are helping to perpetuate a system hell-bent on seizing their guns. 

The 1% have more control than ever and their actions, such as having their butt-puppet, The Great and Powerful Oz, sign NDAA into law demonstrates that they are afraid the people aren't going to take much more.  Much of the hype by corporate media surrounding recent sensationalized incidents of violence in the United States has been fabricated or exaggerated while ongoing, massive violence by employees of the United States government is ignored by the same "concerned" media sources.  The purpose behind the hype is to persuade those who are too stoopid to know better into supporting the 1% in disarming their enemy, the 99%.

They are just concerned about our safety.

Yes, that's obvious.  Disarm the citizens and dissolve entire police departments.  I'm feeling safer already.

Not to worry.  When the police prove to be inadequate, expect to see the military called in to "protect" American citizens.

Who is going to protect the American citizens from the military?

You.  Without.  A.  Gun.

Do you think they would be content with a 2 out of 3 bout of rock, paper, scissors?

Not likely.

However, there is a push by quite a few people to reach out to military and law enforcement officers in an effort to convince them that attacking Americans violates their oath (in addition to being just plain evil).  Speaking of oath, if the two of you are quite finished hogging my blog, it's an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.  The Constitution, or rather the 2^nd Amendment, is the third common argument that I see put forth by gun owners as a rebuttal for stricter gun control and it is by far the weakest of the arguments.  I understand the desire to throw into the mix.  The two, more powerful rebuttals, are rejected so there is this feeling that adding another argument may help.  However, in addition to lacking the strength of the other two arguments and continuing a defeating mindset, it acts as a distraction from the better arguments.  While the two sides bicker about the meaning of the oddly worded amendment and attempt to read the minds of people long since dead, better arguments sit idle.

The common sense problem with using words written on a piece of paper by the rulers of the country is that the rulers can write new words on a piece of paper (or simply just ignore the "god damned piece of paper").  When the rulers do write new words on a piece of paper and your argument was based on the previous words on a piece of paper, your argument is gone.  The possibility that the rulers will write new words on a piece of paper brings up a new argument from gun owners.

Whether or not the new piece of paper is made out of recycled materials.

Or from the skin of someone who stood in the way of ExxonMobil.

Our rulers would never do that, would they?

I'm pretty sure I heard Obama say, "It puts the lotion on its skin," before his last drone attack. 

"This drone attack was brought to you by ExxonMobil.  ExxonMobil, bringing you a brighter tomorrow."

Unless you were the family hit by the drone.

The main thrust of the new argument is on the sacred nature of the Constitution and how changing it would be very, very, very, very wrong.  However, if you bring up changes that abolished slavery or allowed women to vote, the response is, "Well, yeah, those changes were right."  This drops the entire discussion into the realm of the subjective with both sides arguing about the nature of allowable or "right" changes.  Neither side can win this debate because it's a matter of personal opinion.  Easily changed or ignored words on a piece of paper that invokes debates based on a person's point of view completely deballs the Constitutional argument against gun control. 

Yeah, but what if I used the Constitution to make a paper airplane drone?

Then you'd have an argument that was lost in the next gust of wind.

Not only does the 2^nd Amendment rebuttal to gun control score a zero, it has the potential to reaffirm an insidious belief system in those making the argument.  This paradigm is anchored more deeply each time a statement is uttered such as, "The 2^nd Amendment gives me the right to . . ."  This creates or continues the illusion that people have 2^nd Amendment rights.  They don't and it's a very dangerous belief.

WhuchyoutalkinboutWillis?

I hate to say this but I'm with the goofball on this one.

People are constantly discussing their Constitutional rights (in fact, I have done so often in the past) as if they exist.  The danger of this mindset, of believing that the Constitution gives people rights, goes back to the heart of what the Constitution is: words on a piece of paper written by the rulers.  If it were the case that people were given the right by the words on the paper to own a gun, all the rulers would have to do to take away that right is change the words on the paper (or write new words in the form of a "law" that "nullifies" the right).

The truth is that you have human rights based on the fact that you are human.  You might call these inalienable rights.  You have them by the mere fact of being you.  They aren't granted to you by words on a paper.  You have these rights, period, not because they were bestowed upon you by some corporation (even one with an impressive name like The United States of America, Inc.).

Can I buy stock in that corporation?

You are the stock in that corporation.

What people habitually call a "Constitutional Right" is actually a "Constitutional Restriction" on the allowable actions by the rulers.  You don't have a right to own a gun because of the 2^nd Amendment.  You have the right to own a gun because humans have the right to own property.  People do not have the right to take your property without your consent.  Since the rulers exempted themselves from this basic moral principle, they had to put some assurances down in writing (2^nd and 4^th Amendments) for the people that they, the rulers, wouldn't just take stuff from people without a good reason.

But don't the rulers get to decide what amounts to a "good reason?"

Very good, Grasshopper.

By incessantly arguing about the 2^nd Amendment granting the right of the people to bear arms, the false notion that the government gives people rights is ingrained even deeper.  The truth of the matter is that governments can't grant rights which are inalienable, they can only violate those rights.  In fact, their whole existence depends on violating the rights of people.  If the rulers can somehow get the people to believe and act like their rights are derived from the government, the people can be more easily controlled.  If the people trap themselves in this mindset, the rulers don't have to openly expose the true basis of their control, their willingness to initiate violence against the people.

To be continued . . .

Guns and Control (Part 1) *Updated

So,

Scrolling down my Facebook wall, I see that the gun control debate(?) continues.  The 1% apparently still have the support of The Great and Powerful Oz's cult members.  Quite frankly, I am surprised that Obama still has followers, nevermind loyal followers, especially on this issue.  They voted for a guy who has officially started twice as many wars as King George (W Bush for those of you who are new visitors), plus who knows how many unofficial wars, and has used six times as many drones as the Illiterate One.  As violent as his supporters are, you would think they would be clamoring for government handouts of drones so they could all fly one and kill someone.

Can you use an iPhone to control the drone?

I'm sure Obama has the app.  Maybe he'll share.

The minions and people who believe in freedom have tried to point out the complete lack of logic in the argument for gun control.  While they have, for the most part succeeded, I feel like they have missed the heart of the issue.  Not that it would change anything.  Democrats are, for the next few years, the obedient servants of the 1% and reasoning, rationality, and logic have no place in their lives at the moment.  

At the moment?

Well, there was that one time that . . . oh wait, no, I was thinking of Jeffrey Dahmer.

And Republicans are better?

Shah, as if.

No, when the Republican representative of the 1% gets voted in as president, it will likely be worse because the response to any objection to the president's insane policies will be, "Screw you!  We had 8 years of your guy so suck it!"  

That seems perfectly logical.

To you and 10% of the people in the state hospital.

Can we get back on task, please?  From what I can gather, the logic of the argument from the people trying to disarm the people so the 1% can more easily control every aspect of the lives of their inferiors goes something like this:

1. People with guns are dangerous.

2. Dangerous situations should be avoided or prevented.

Therefore . . .

Can I point something out about statement number 1?

No, you'll ruin everything.

Again, from what I can gather (because I can think for myself and do not belong to either team so I'm guessing at their reasoning(?)), the rebuttals from anti-gun control people generally fall into three categories.  Two of them are tied directly to presumed logic for gun control and the third is based on the Constitution.  I will save the discussion about the Constitution for part 2 of this blog post because it's groundless and doesn't actually deal with the argument presented to support gun control.

Did he say "groundless?"

Yes, and I'm sure he'll hear about it.

Rebuttal #1 directly challenges statement #1 by showing that (1) places where gun control restrictions are the strictest have higher rates of violent crime, meaning that people who live in areas where guns are routinely carried by citizens are safer than their counterparts.  (2) I also routinely see stories on Facebook walls where a citizen was able to protect themself or a third party from harm because they had a gun.  Not only are guns not dangerous but they protect people from harm.  Many of the Facebook posters go on to state that it's the people that you have to worry about, not the guns. 

Rebuttal #2 takes a different approach by agreeing with the general logic of the argument presented and pointing out that, if this logic is true, it only makes sense to start with the most dangerous situations first and move down the list.  To make the world a safer place in the least amount of time, it makes sense to take on the most critical issues first.  Being in a Software Engineering class at the moment, this concept makes perfect sense to me.  You deal with the biggest risk first and work your way down the list.  Whatever is killing the most people should be banned first.

Do people really care "what makes sense" when they are trying to exert control over other people by using violence and the threat of violence?

Not that I can see.

Obesity, cigarettes, cars, doctors and hospitals, and a whole schload of things come in above guns when it comes to people dying.  It doesn't make sense to jump down to something that kills 30,000 people a year when, "According to the National Institutes of Health, obesity and overweight together are the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States, close behind tobacco use (3). An estimated 300,000 deaths per year are due to the obesity epidemic (57)," (WV Department of Health and Human Resources).  This becomes even more true if you discount suicide by guns because more people in the United States kill themselves with a gun than kill someone else. 

Does that mean that suicide should be illegal?

Yes, no one is allowed to kill people except the government.

If you make gun ownership illegal and someone can't get one on the alternate market or steal one from their mom, they could just pop all the pills in their medicine cabinet or park their running car in the garage. 

Make all those things illegal.  That's what I say!

And prosecute the dead person?  What's next?  Give them the death penalty?

It's obvious that the call for gun control by the masses isn't grounded in any logical reasoning.  My guess is that it's caused by an emotional response to sensationalized stories by the 1 percent's media but that's only a guess.  There is obviously something going on here beyond a concern for human life.  Under the orders of their messiah, government employees kill people on a daily basis, fund terrorist groups, perform false flag missions against their own people, assassinate people who refuse to cooperate, incite riots and revolutions, and all manner of other actions that end with the death of innocent people.  No, they clearly don't give a rat's ass about human life so I'm left with the inclination that they are anti-gun because they have been told to be anti-gun and the message has been delivered to them in an emotional wrapper to not only make it easier to swallow but to make them *want* to swallow it.  While they voted for a president who started twice as many illegal wars as the last guy (not including all the covert wars, illegal wars called by some other name, and people killed by despotic rulers paid by the US government), it makes them feel self-righteous to champion the anti-gun cause.

This attitude, this absurd claim to moral high-ground while voting for a mass murderer, I find to be the second most surprising thing about the team on the left side of the 1%.

* Update: Destiny put this in my YouTube feed tonight - http://youtu.be/V3MuzLezG9s

To be continued . . .

School Break

So,

I am on break from school, in which I did most of my homework in nothing but my bra and panties.

Gotta luv online schooling.

Ummm, nevermind.

I thought fer shure that I was going to lose my 4.0 gpa this go 'round because I don't do well on the type of test that one of the instructors gave.  Memorize a thousand similar terms for processes and steps within processes and then pick them out of a list of other similar terms for processes and steps within processes.  No thinking required. 

Just like public schooling.

Which you attended, I would assume.

Bite me!

You kiss your teacher with that mouth?

College has really been a factor in changing my personal paradigm.  I'm in upper level classes now and it's very rare that I see any evidence of upper level thinking, nevermind any actual individual thought or critical thinking.  I suppose I was naive going into this but my eyes have been opened.  Public education has truly dumbed people down to being obedient little robots incapable of connecting any dots.  In fact, no effort is even made to gain any understanding beyond what is required in the regurgitation system. 

On top of that, I had to work in a team of these regurtitoids.

Yikes!

Yikes for working on the team or yikes for the term regurtitoids.

I just came up with that term at this writing and I think I shall keep it.  Republican minions and Democrat cult members are subsets of the Regurtitoid  Family.  The Minion Genus and Democrat Genus (not to even be remotely confused with genius) specialize in regurgitating the senseless talking points from talking heads paid to program the faithful (but brainless) followers. 

Speaking of which, did you see that The Great and Powerful Oz was Time's person of the year even though the subscribers actually chose Kim Jong Un first and Jon Stewart second?  What is the point of having subscribers vote if you're just going to ignore it to pretend like Obama is worth half-a-shit?  Is it just to demonstrate to the voters that they have no say in it?  To Time, I would say, "Give up!  They don't get it.  They will be voting next time too.  Might as well ding them in the head with rocks."

Back on topic, and making this term scary for me for this class, was the fact that I had to work in a team of regurtitoids.  Between my inability to memorize pointless crap and the inability of most people to actually try, it wasn't looking good for me.  It quickly became clear that on our team of six, there were two of us that were going to try and four that were going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the destination of gaining an "A" grade.  Jason (whose name hasn't been changed because he needs no protection) and I exchanged a few emails on the topic and came up with a plan.  I would lead the way and he would kick the asses of the stragglers.  The first day of the plan, one of the stragglers dropped completely out of the class.  The rest pretended to care and in the end wished Jason and I luck on getting our A's.

The Asses versus the A's?

Kind of like you and me.

During the last week, one of the assignments was to give a score between 0 and 50 to our team mates for the work that they put in.  The scores from each team member would be averaged for the scored entered into the grade book.  I checked in a couple of days ago expecting to see my B grade and saw that it was an A (Huzzah!).  This prompted me to go look at the grades for my assignments and look for feedback from my instructor.  The average score from my team members was 50, which wasn't much of a surprise.  We assigned a project manager from our team but it was only a title because I ended up being the project leader in reality. 

What was surprising was the comment from the instructor.  Out of the 200 students he had in Project Management, he just computed the averages and didn't leave any comments for them.  Other than mine, obviously, since I was reading about him not giving comments in a comment to me.  I probably put more time into my peer evaluation than everyone else in the class put together and he wanted to thank me for my insights into, not just about my team, but how the assignment fit into the class as a "project."  He said that he would be changing future classes based on my feedback.  I will apologize right now to any future students because my guess is that one of the changes will be to make the project harder because I said it was too easy.

Next up is Information Systems Security and Business Finance but not until next year.  Until then, I may just have to take a look around in the world and blog about what I see.  Here's how much attention school has taken for me.  Wednesday night, after the election for the next puppet-in-chief, my wife was telling me the results of our local elections and was asking about how it would all shake out (a completely different story that I won't go into but that turned out exactly as I said it would).  When we were done talking about it, I asked her who had been elected president.  I didn't have a clue.  Not that it mattered to me anyway but I would usually know these things.

So that he knows who to mock in this blog.

True dat.

***

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Hammers and Nails

So,

Here I am with a blog post.  Amazing, I know.  College took more than even I expected this last term and the next one, which starts tomorrow, doesn't look like it will be any lighter.  I haven't been able to stay up to date with current events in the depth that I prefer and have been reduced to scanning headlines most of the time.  A recurring theme I have heard is that when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

I saw a video (posted below) about the Quebec student protests that brought this to mind this morning.  Students in Quebec (and around the world) are upset about the escalating cost of higher education and are letting the government know about it.  Someone with half a brain would think that an appropriate response would be to work on some way to lower the cost of education.  Unfortunately, we are talking about politicians. 

The truth is that the hammer *is* the primary tool in the government workbelt but the reason that it is finally getting so much press is that it's been used more transparently, more often, and predominately against the 99%.  The Internet has been effective enough at reducing the other major tools (propaganda and indoctrination) that the hammer is being used liberally while the 1% tries to find a way to gain control over the world wide web.

Instead of looking at reducing tuition costs for students or even *saying* they will look at reducing tuition costs for students, the rocket surgeons wielding the hammer passed a law making it illegal to protest without permission from the police.  That's like a patient going in to take care of an itchy rash on his right arm and the doctor tying down the patient's left arm to keep him from scratching it.  Actually it's worse than that because, in this case, it brought extra people into the fight on the students' side.

People who were not protesting tuition hikes came out to protest the new anti-protest law.  Shortly after the law was passed, 700 people were arrested for illegally protesting.  This just brought more people out to protest the arrests and the heavy-handed tactics used by the police.  The response to the hammer seems to be such a no-brainer that it leaves me wondering what game the lawmakers are playing.  Have they painted themselves into such a corner that they are powerless to do anything else?  Wouldn't it have been better to do nothing than fan the flames? 

What do you think?  Why are lawmakers around the world making symptoms illegal instead of dealing with the disease?