4 thoughts on “WashTimes: The cop-killer bullet myth”
We learn to control ourselves. But like with all things learnt, there are degrees of success, and we can forget or willfully unlearn any aquired behaviour. As a population, we are far from being self-destructive, but individually, we are variously competent at restraining our instincts, and there is no automated machinery to fall back on.
I understand this whole gun control endeavour is an attempt to guarantee a minimal level of protection for individuals. A futile one, I think.
“We can kill each other with so many things, and nothing prevents us from doing so.”
Then why aren’t we all dead?
There may be a scientific rationale underlying the gun prohibition philosophy, although I am not sure its proponents understand it properly. If they do, they don’t say. The root problem of gun violence, or let’s rather say, any technology-assisted violence, is that humans have no built-in prohibition against it. There was no evolutionary advantage in having it, and if it ever emerged by chance, it did not stick.
All animals that possess lethal powers in their bodies (claws, teeth, or venom) have also evolved significant constraints on using such powers against their own kind. For some, it is a taboo to even show their teeth to their opponent. Venomous snakes have taken it to the extreme: in a territorial contest, the one that can stand taller without falling on the side becomes the winner, and the loser simply crawls away. Their “combat” is more like a human sports event, if not a beauty contest. Bulls, on the other hand, engage in extremely violent and bloody fights, but they can’t hurt each other lethally and cows seem to prefer the more violent ones, so on it goes. Humans and many other primates are in the same category. We have no innate rules of engagement of any kind. Their absence is compensated by cultural norms, which are not 100% reliable.
Because it is so easy for us to kill each other with things, and because we do not possess a “thou shalt not kill” instinct, it seems natural to some politicians that making us rid of weapons and downgrading our violent behaviour back to the level of bullfights will help to restore peace and order in society. Why are they obsessed with guns is beyond me. We can kill each other with so many things, and nothing prevents us from doing so.
No, there are very few incidents in which cops are attacked with rifles or hardened bullets. But then it looks like Sandy Hook was perpetrated with handguns, not a black rifle. The gun-grabbers have the same relationship with facts as the climate-change charlatans and for the same reasons.
The goal of the gun-grabbers is the same broad goal as the nanny-bully-statists. They want us compliant — with our healthcare restrictions, with our diets, with our cars and travel and certainly they want us to consider self-defense to be uncouth at best, immoral if they can get away with it. The UK is most of the way there.
As Glen Reynolds says, “They’ll make us all into beggars because they’re easier to please.” If they can try to turn us wolves into sheep at the same time, all the better.
I don’t want to blame the victims at Aurora or Virginia Tech — but I do blame a society that had everyone ducking and no one looking for how to fight. A movie theater contains lots of things to throw at an assailant. But did anyone? Maybe, but I haven’t heard it. A college building has even more: books, CDs (I’m not kidding), even small furniture. Even the adults at Sandy Hook may have failed to think of how to attack Adam Lanza in order to stop him. Anything that disrupts the assailant may help break up the attack. Fighting back is risky, yes, but it may be less risky than attempting to hide. Robert Heinlein wrote, “There are no deadly weapons, only deadly men”, to which I would append “people”.
I followed a link at Newsbusters to a religion column on guns and self-defense. The writer touched on self-love and love of others as a justification for self-defense and then seemed to dismiss it. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”
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We learn to control ourselves. But like with all things learnt, there are degrees of success, and we can forget or willfully unlearn any aquired behaviour. As a population, we are far from being self-destructive, but individually, we are variously competent at restraining our instincts, and there is no automated machinery to fall back on.
I understand this whole gun control endeavour is an attempt to guarantee a minimal level of protection for individuals. A futile one, I think.
“We can kill each other with so many things, and nothing prevents us from doing so.”
Then why aren’t we all dead?
There may be a scientific rationale underlying the gun prohibition philosophy, although I am not sure its proponents understand it properly. If they do, they don’t say. The root problem of gun violence, or let’s rather say, any technology-assisted violence, is that humans have no built-in prohibition against it. There was no evolutionary advantage in having it, and if it ever emerged by chance, it did not stick.
All animals that possess lethal powers in their bodies (claws, teeth, or venom) have also evolved significant constraints on using such powers against their own kind. For some, it is a taboo to even show their teeth to their opponent. Venomous snakes have taken it to the extreme: in a territorial contest, the one that can stand taller without falling on the side becomes the winner, and the loser simply crawls away. Their “combat” is more like a human sports event, if not a beauty contest. Bulls, on the other hand, engage in extremely violent and bloody fights, but they can’t hurt each other lethally and cows seem to prefer the more violent ones, so on it goes. Humans and many other primates are in the same category. We have no innate rules of engagement of any kind. Their absence is compensated by cultural norms, which are not 100% reliable.
Because it is so easy for us to kill each other with things, and because we do not possess a “thou shalt not kill” instinct, it seems natural to some politicians that making us rid of weapons and downgrading our violent behaviour back to the level of bullfights will help to restore peace and order in society. Why are they obsessed with guns is beyond me. We can kill each other with so many things, and nothing prevents us from doing so.
No, there are very few incidents in which cops are attacked with rifles or hardened bullets. But then it looks like Sandy Hook was perpetrated with handguns, not a black rifle. The gun-grabbers have the same relationship with facts as the climate-change charlatans and for the same reasons.
The goal of the gun-grabbers is the same broad goal as the nanny-bully-statists. They want us compliant — with our healthcare restrictions, with our diets, with our cars and travel and certainly they want us to consider self-defense to be uncouth at best, immoral if they can get away with it. The UK is most of the way there.
As Glen Reynolds says, “They’ll make us all into beggars because they’re easier to please.” If they can try to turn us wolves into sheep at the same time, all the better.
I don’t want to blame the victims at Aurora or Virginia Tech — but I do blame a society that had everyone ducking and no one looking for how to fight. A movie theater contains lots of things to throw at an assailant. But did anyone? Maybe, but I haven’t heard it. A college building has even more: books, CDs (I’m not kidding), even small furniture. Even the adults at Sandy Hook may have failed to think of how to attack Adam Lanza in order to stop him. Anything that disrupts the assailant may help break up the attack. Fighting back is risky, yes, but it may be less risky than attempting to hide. Robert Heinlein wrote, “There are no deadly weapons, only deadly men”, to which I would append “people”.
I followed a link at Newsbusters to a religion column on guns and self-defense. The writer touched on self-love and love of others as a justification for self-defense and then seemed to dismiss it. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”