[extropy-chat] The Consensus

[Dirk Bruere]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "R.Coyote" <etheric at comcast.net>
To: "Dirk Bruere" <dirk at neopax.com>; "ExI chat list"
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus


> "I have heard from a number of Americans how they feel it is..."
>
> This is the base of your understanding of this issue?

As a percentage of people I've met, yes.

> "Universal and unlimited rights to own weapons does not... "
>
> Thats not what we have here at all, this is quite an exaggeration.

Then let's hear your limits - where, precisely, would you start infringing
an individuals freedom?

> Use of force is the LAST stage of a defense continuum, avoidance of danger
> is the first, however one can never predict when and where danger may
> strike, and many of us do not have the luxury to relocate to safer
environs.
>
> Anyway I don't feel comfortable to narrowcast my broad reservations of the
> Consensus into the firearms issue,  And so to simplify things, I find your
> manifesto generally very restricting on personal freedoms, and I yern for
> even more freedom than we currently have now.

Well, the Consensus would give you that, but if it's not enough just keep
hoping.

>  If you refuse to take responsibility for defense of yourself or your
family
> that's your thing, but my families pistols would never be a threat to you,
> my wife and I have lawfully carried out and about in public for many many
> years and MAGICALLY nothing dreadful has ever happened.

Yet something quite unmagical does happen to tens of thousands of people
every year in the US with regard to guns.

> Do yourself a favor and stop watching so many Clint Eastwood movies,
> unfortunately the gun owners image is unfairly associated with the good
ol'
> boy bubba truck drivin wife beater crowd, most gun owners are not like
that
> or like Dirty Harry Calahan, any more than you Brits are all crossdressing
> sillywalking Monty Python clones pip pip tally ho and all that rot.

I've met both kinds, and I'd say that US gun-nuts vastly outnumber  Monty
Python clones.

Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millennium
http://www.theconsensus.org