[ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jun 5, 2020, at 5:44 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, IMO.
> 
> 
>  
> There ya go, Dan.  That notion should put to bed any remaining suggestion that Americans do not need to own a gun.  Even the possibility that an entire police force could just get pissed and walk off the job (as they did in St. Louis this week) should be a clear unambiguous reminder that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. 
>  
> If we abolish the police, we also abolish all gun control laws, all of them.  Without a professional police force, we all need to have and to carry guns.
>  
> We have the opportunity to educate our society on the meaning of the phrase “…shall not be infringed.”
>  
> spike

It seems you believe I'm against people defending themselves and others. Is this so? In fact, I've argued for arming the masses -- not just the US-American masses, but worldwide. This is the correct Left position on this issue. (In fact, traditionally, the Right wants the masses disarmed to prevent them getting uppity. The strange thing is that many modern Leftists seem to want the opposite: disarmed masses and armed elites. To me, this is typically how those in the Left eventually turn to the Right on issues once they have power.)  

In fact, I'd argue that immigrants and other marginal people need to be armed and defended more so than your average person. For instance, immigrants in the US tend to commit less crime but suffer more crime than non-immigrants. This is so even though, as studies have shown, immigrants tend to under-report crimes committed against them. Ditto for trans people and for 'mentally ill' people.*

That said, overall violence is down. I don't agree with the view that somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree. That's like a Hollywood movie scenario. Real life, however, almost never looks like that. A case in point is almost any natural disaster. We generally don't see Mad Max: Fury Road playing out, but people usually helping each other. (Yet just about any movie about a natural disaster shows people turning vicious and against each other. Again, look at the real world events and data -- rather than movie or TV narrative.)

As for your citing the COTUS, you should note well that the right has been infringed, and that should call into question your seeing the COTUS as some sort of shield against injustice. Either the COTUS authorized those infringements or did nothing to stop them. Or as Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) put it:

'But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it.  In either case it is unfit to exist.'

Regards,

Dan

* I'm not the only one calling for this. See Jane Louise's piece from five years ago:

https://c4ss.org/content/3966
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