fraggle said:
Every gun in the country is three times more likely to be used (by the owner in a moment of anger, confusion or clumsiness, by an intruder who wrestles it away from the owner, by a burglar who steals it, or by a criminal he sells it to) to kill an innocent victim. It is also three times more likely to be used (by the owner, by a member of the owner's household, or by someone who bought it at a swap meet from the aforementioned burglar) to commit suicide. That makes six tragedies for every legitimate instance of self-defense.
In other words, every gun brought into this country makes each one of us a little bit less safe.
The conclusion does not follow. The benefits of guns in self defense - even their direct and overt employments, a very small minority of such benefits - are not measured in casualties, and comparing death rates tells us almost nothing about them. It is badly confused reasoning. You can't even begin to count "legitimate instances" of self defense by counting dead people, let alone measure a general status of defended person and hearth and home.
Example: burglaries of occupied dwellings, rate of.
fraggle said:
No it's not. The most concise definition of fascism is "resistance to transcendence." The original Fascisti in 1930s Italy, and then in the Third Reich where they were called National Socialists or "Nazis," were people who just wanted to keep things as they were
Don't be ridiculous. That's conservatism.
The mystical appeal to transcendence of current degradations physical and spiritual, the borderline psychotic appeal to revolt and overthrow and make new the world by cleansing it of the foulness currently oppressing and impoverishing it, the massive crowd manipulating incitements to destroy the oppressors and free the naturally superior Aryan for their proper role, to join in victory over the subhuman and dirty and sickly and gain freedom from existing misery with one's clean and healthy and delivered brothers in arms, is not in the slightest a movement to keep things just as they are.
fraggle said:
Every conservative political movement that favors an aggressive military policy, a balance of political power in favor of the corporations, and the "ideology" (to use a polite word) of a man with pre-senile dementia who can't speak in complete sentences or remember the ending of an old homily like "Fool me once...", is not fascism.
Every political movement that espouses or works toward the dominance of society and government by a capitalist corporate military/industrial elite established by force and legitimizing its authority by mystical appeal to myth, is fascistic to that extent, and fascism itself if that is its extent. W's personal ideology and intellectual shortcoming is irrelevant to the nature of his governance - just thank the gods the man was as incapable as he proved to be.
The government doesn't need troops to oppress us.
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how does any amount or types of guns protect you from the US military? It will not and never could!
Once again: tyranny is launched by death squads, Kristallnachts, Klans, gangs, rogue National Guards or paramilitary police, and the like. The supposed role of the personal firearm in combating governmental tyranny is not in open military conflict with a standing industrial army.
btw, about the prospects for banning guns in the US: the single most frequently purchased weapon in the US is some version of the AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle. And the central component of that weapon - its defining feature, the box the trigger mechanism and magazine and all the rest fit to - is the first thing that kid who just printed a plastic handgun printed. With one of those in hand, one can easily build the rest of the weapon from parts available by mail without restriction. And tens of thousands of people have done that already - built their own AR-15 from parts.
Good luck banning that without imposing rigid authoritarian control.