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  • Posted by $ CBJ 9 years ago
    See the book Ayn Rand Answers – The Best of Her Q&A by Robert Mayhew. Regarding gun control, Ayn Rand says, “I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it’s not of primary importance.”

    Ayn Rand’s general position, as best I can determine from the two quotes below (from The Virtue of Selfishness), is that individuals have the right of self-defense, that in a free society they delegate this right to the government, and that the method by which this right is implemented can properly be determined by a majority vote. I take this to mean that citizens in an Objectivist country can adopt laws setting limits on the types of weapons that citizens can own.

    “There is only one basic principle to which an individual must consent if he wishes to live in a free, civilized society: the principle of renouncing the use of physical force and delegating to the government his right of physical self-defense, for the purpose of an orderly, objective, legally defined enforcement.”

    “A free nation – a nation that recognizes, respects and protects the individual rights of its
    Citizens – has a right to its territorial integrity, its social system and its form of government. The government of such a nation is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense). The citizens of a free nation may disagree about the specific legal procedures or methods of implementing their rights (which is a complex problem, the province of political science and of the philosophy of law), but they agree on the basic principle to be implemented: the principle of individual rights. When a country’s constitution places individual rights outside the reach of public authorities, the sphere of political power is severely delimited—and thus the citizens may, safely and properly, agree to abide by the decisions of a majority vote in this delimited sphere.”
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  • Posted by jimslag 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I am not that old either. By we, I meant as a country. As for the military despising the populace, I resent that remark as I am a veteran and I have seen nothing of what you claim but of course the country did not have a war while I was in, only police actions. I do not claim to be greater than thou as for the definition of war but you seem to have that right or at least claim that right. As for what Truman did, he did it to save American lives, not Japanese ones and that still does not justify their use in my eyes. I believe in Nuclear Power for electricity not for war or any other use.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    That's your definition. I repudiate it as an excuse not a reason. Where will you be standing on that day of days? I'm thinking it 's time the cannon fodder engineered a different method. Get some more 'skin' in the game and reframe the target area under discussion. After all were it not for jet streams or perhaps just ensure the capability is not proliferated for any such reason as a claim of a religious fit.

    One of the reasons the military despises the population is their despicable willingness to sacrifice anyone and and everyone except themselves. So you used them? that makes you how old? I'm not enough to make that claim. What we did was prevent their use not ensure it.

    But then x+y=zero.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Having used the only two as weapons the nation took on the added responsibility of preventing their use. Most object because there is nowhere to run no where to hide. Some for other reasons. Me... I always hated land mines. But hen 'i was a professional soldier. But through it all it was non-proliferation that kept things in check follwoed by MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction. We could go to Unilaterally Assured Destruction and the other side to IAD's using FAEs. Of little matter since they unlike our previous opponents believe death is a good thing and have chosen religious suicide as their main weapon of choice. MAD doesn't work well nor does UAD all of a sudden but PAD or Pre-emptive Assured Destruction suddenly becomes useful.


    How strong is their faith if they find out after giving their wannabe martyrs a place and time in court we were to prepared to shoot first and bury them in pig carcasses. Sound rough? No worse than nuclear immolation. A certain amount not including the Islamic Atheists would become desaparecido. Rather lowers the odds.

    It's not important for them to know we will or won't it's only important for us to know and for them to believe it. An occasional demonstration of 'will' helps. Does it work?

    Remember 9/11?

    Instead assume they remembered Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I assure you, hyperbole aside the Japanese do. Terrorist tactics? So? It's only called that if you lose.

    But all the philosophy and all the rest of it won't stop zip when the missing ingredient is 'will' and a rather believable form of it. Not just the fear of an unstable clown nor a tradition of giving in every step of the way. Nor of a group of people that gave up everything to ensure peace in their short lifespan and in doing so lost.

    I sure as hell would not believe this goverrnment of ours nor the people in the nation that put them there. They lack will, they lack honesty and the lack another key ingredient. Not just a philosophy but a moral philosophy.
    .
    That being the case I'm willing to bet Washington DC against Tehran. Instead of Washington DC betting our lives let them stand on Double Zero.

    Convoluted but it works for me and it doesn't require the use of nukes in either direction.
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  • Posted by Zenphamy 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    k, I've found this: "Journal of the United States Artillery: Published Under Direction ..., Volume 57
    By John W. Rickman, John Philip Wisser, Andrew Hero (Jr.)" which relates the private ownership of canons on plantations in Virginia.

    Additionally, there are private owned cannons today and even tanks with operable guns. Paul Allen owns his own SU-29, a Russian Fighter Jet.
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  • Posted by $ jdg 9 years ago
    I would say yes, excepting only WMDs.

    But I don't think it's practically possible for individuals to outspend the federal government while still having an army that can defend the country. So I'd propose that we reverse the post-Civil-War "federalization" of the state militias (or at least make any federal call-up voluntary) while encouraging the large states to break up into smaller ones, thus re-creating locally-controlled (or at least state controlled) militias all over the country which together have the feds outgunned.

    That's the way the founders set it up, and that's the way it should have stayed. And if it results in some successful secessions, that's a feature, not a bug.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 9 years ago
    Of course. If you can afford a fighter jet, buy it. As a citizen, you are buying it for the armed services already. If not, where are they getting the money to buy one?
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  • Posted by Grendol 9 years ago
    Arms are tools. You can use them to create value through the preservation of freedom. Just because someone can use the tool for evil should not be sufficient reason to take that from them. The logical fallacy that the existence of a potential to commit a crime is reason enough to ban something has been abused as pretext to disarm many people. What I find is that tools (be they capital, actual tools, or weapons) in general are coveted by the new ruling class in a collectivist society as a means to achieve, build, maintain, and monopolize power for themselves while they subjugate the people they 'serve'. Arms, being a created thing, are impossible to effectively eradicate from a population that wishes to have them. In the Palestinian Territories I have seen photos of preteen boys making gun parts in a basement factory. You can make black powder and a cannon with a trip to the hardware store. You can make rudimentary chemical weapons with a high school chemistry text and a trip to the hardware store and possibly a drug store. Banning arms is ineffective in the long term, but serves the short term purpose of weakening the violent resistance of an invaded population. Many many people have ownership or the ability to possess small arms and possibly arms of mass destruction but commit no moral crime with them because they chose not to, not because there is a law. Ultimately private citizens will own arms because they want to. If they want to make it more difficult for their assailants endeavors to subjugate them, then Yes Private Citizens Should Own Arms.
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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I hate regulations as much as the next guy -- actually I hate them a lot more than the average next guy. But is there no philosophical limits to what I'm allowed to do until I actually harm my neighbor.

    We live in a world where a suitably knowledgeable person can construct a virus that could kill virtually the entire human population if it got out of his lab.

    Do we have no recourse until we are doomed.

    As to it being the government, that's the appropriate agency for retaliatory use of force. Of course you have to make the argument that my R&D project forcibly damages your safety without your consent.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    not criticism, just observation, K;;; we could have dirty bomb
    or biological or chemical attack plans being finalized. . finding
    those people, who are assuredly among us, might be the question. -- j

    p.s. I will pose this as an "ask the gulch" question.
    ..
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  • Posted by jimslag 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I think we learned a lesson in what sort of damage they do back in 1945 and have not used one since in wartime or anything other than testing. We also used them in a war and not just a sectarian or religious fit.
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  • Posted by tentoone 9 years ago
    Yes they should and the way are govt is suppose to work is we own what the govt has. I have representives from my local district to represent how they use my stuff.
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    You might want to go to Real Clear Politics and read Peter Schwartz latest article "A Rational Case For Gun Ownership.
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  • Posted by khalling 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    why this is interesting involves shippers currently. The US owned companies did not allow the shipmen to be armed, and they are easily pirated. I do not know if that is a company decision or govt
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  • Posted by rjajr 9 years ago
    Peter Schwartz addressed this subject, in part, in the November 15, 1980 issue of the Intellectual Activist titled "Guns and Knee-jerkism". (You can purchase a copy of this issue at the Ayn Rand Institute eStore: https://estore.aynrand.org/p/799/the-...

    Schwartz states: "People have the right of self-defense and, therefore, the right to own guns. And the less adequate is the state's police protection, the more crucial that right becomes. (This does not, of course, mean that anyone ought to be permitted to carry any weapons he wishes. The government should certainly intervene when there is evidence that there exists a threat to innocent people -- for example, when someone carries a howitzer down the street, or when a minor or a convicted violent felon tries to buy a gun. But a gun in the hands of a normal adult does not in itself constitute a threat, and the government has no right to step in.)”

    Whether or not any particular weapon represents an objective threat would depend on the following: (1) how safe is the weapon in the hands of a normal adult; that is, how easily it is controlled by the individual, and/or (2) how destructive is the weapon when used.

    Most small arms require a very deliberate procedure for loading, arming and firing the weapon. And, even if a round is accidentally discharged after going through this procedure, the danger, though potentially serious, is limited.

    A grenade, on the other hand, has no built in safety mechanisms and can cause great harm to anyone nearby if it is detonated.

    A howitzer requires a very definite procedure for loading, arming and firing, but it is very destructive.

    So, I would argue that there should be no conditions set on the ownership and use of small arms, subject to the two conditions above, and, like Schwartz, I would argue that government should set conditions on their ownership and use of more destruction weapons like grenades, howitzers, etc..

    I would like to add that the government cannot properly ban any weapon. They can only set proper objective conditions of their ownership and use, subject to the two general conditions I mentioned above.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years ago
    The question should be reversed given the explicit wording of the Second Amendment. The real question should be does the government have a right to restrict such? The clear and unconditional answer is no.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years ago in reply to this comment.
    One of the moves most contested just before Lexington and Concord was the confiscation of a town armory which included several cannons. Having heard about it happening (the previous day I believe), those two towns took up their arms to violently protest the seizure of their respective armories.
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