Clarity

What is the relationship between guns and murder?

About guns

Absurd!

Did you know that Baltimore police officers are not allowed to carry guns during the hours students are in school? They can carry before or after school but must store their weapons in a secure location during the school day. Christina Tkacik reports more here in the Baltimore Sun.

Why carrying a gun is a civilized act

Marko Kloos writes at Munchkin Wrangler,

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

But they have strict gun control regulations!

Gun control is ultimately about people control. It sprouts from racist soil.

Thanks to Randy B. Corporan

Get to know a conservative today, and have some fun!

Bookworm Room writes today about how progressives stifle humor and free speech with their political correctness obsessions. Read the whole thing here.

More guns, more pot, and more booze?

Joanne Ditmer reminds us that

the 30-year Dunedin Study of more than 1,000 people found that those who used pot regularly as teens and young adults permanently reduced their IQ scores by 6 points.

Now two pot businesses want to open up shop on Denver's popular 16th Street Mall, a one mile stretch that

has 100 restaurant and beverage/entertainment establishments and one liquor store, drawing locals and visitors. It also draws complaints of beggars, transients and fights.

Alcohol is

already a problem downtown and it could get worse given legislation now being considered. Lower Downtown — with its multitude of bars and restaurants that become Denver's most dangerous area when liquor service ends at 2 a.m., according to the police — is already known for late-night fights. Drunks spill into the streets, fight with fists, knives and guns; there have been deaths and serious injuries.

The strangest solution offered for this problem is a bill sponsored by state Rep. Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, which would allow local governments to set alcohol's "last call" as late as 4:30 a.m. Booze could flow all night.

The trouble is caused by liquor, and now everyone could drink more, longer? Is the idea that more people would be "falling down drunk" and so there'd be fewer confrontations? Longer hours would certainly be more costly for business owners.

Less drinking, not more, seems more likely to reduce the mayhem. Perhaps we should go the opposite way: Years ago, liquor service at Colorado restaurants and stores ended at midnight Saturday, and lasted all 24 hours of Sunday. That was a little difficult to explain to out-of-staters, but it did seem to work.

As for guns, the legislature passed bills last year that dictated expanded background checks, with a fee, for all would-be purchasers, and limiting ammunition magazines to 15 rounds. Lots of furor followed, with 396,955 Coloradans trying to buy a gun in 2013. Only 1.9 percent were denied. How many will train on proper usage and how to secure guns safely?