[ExI] age of mockery

[Charlie Stross]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 00:48, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK
> 
> 
>> ...You know, of course, that the UK doesn't have a First Amendment right...
> 
> BillK, you lads should get one.  Actually you need some second amendment
> rights before you have a chance at having some first amendment rights.

The gun thing would be wildly unpopular here. Seriously. The handgun ban happened on a wave of public hysteria.

Actually, it *is* legal to own a shotgun or rifle in the UK; if I wanted one I could file the forms for a license today and almost certainly get it approved. Limits: no pump-action or sawn-off on the shotgun side, bolt-action only on the rifle. What's totally forbidden are: anything automatic or semi-automatic, suppressors, and modern handguns -- anything that can fire rapidly or be concealed, in other words. 

Note that the UK population is 80% urban, for values of "urban" that are utterly alien to Americans; if the continental USA was populated to the same density as the UK it would hold roughly the entire current world population (around 7 billion).

As for the "armed populace -> free speech (by force if necessary)" trope, it's a canard. For starters, the government *always* has more guns than the public, and better ones at that. For seconds, the US constitution has a first amendment that says the government may not infringe the right to free speech. That is *not* the same as saying that there's free speech. Get back to me when you've sorted out the right of paedophiles to publish child pornography, if you want to assert that you've got free speech. Some types of speech are free-er than others, is all.

This is not to say that I don't think free speech is a good idea. But it's a very complex one -- much more complex than most people realize -- and it probably doesn't work without people who have truly internalized the difference between speech and deed: the anti-censorship equivalent of New Soviet Man, in other words. 



-- Charlie