At 02:10 PM 12/15/02 -0500, cubic-dog wrote:
On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, John Kelsey wrote:
...
> running on a pro-freedom slate, politicians will be found to do that. NoteThat's not really the point of my example. The fact that privately-owned guns are both:
> that guns are still legal in the US, despite the fact that armed private
> citizens are apparently *very* unpopular with the decisionmaking elite in
> the US. (This makes sense, too. My risks of being shot by anyone are
> quite low, as I live in a middle-class neighborhood and take reasonable
> precautions. But if you're a politician or public figure, you're much more
> likely to be a target, and much more likely to be able to hire an off-duty
> cop or other carefully-screened person to carry a gun and defend you.)
When was the last time in these here Untied Status
that a political figure was shot for political reasons?
a. Still mostly legal
b. Seriously unpopular with many or most of the decisionmakers
implies that when there's enough popular support for pro-liberty positions, they can overcome the natural desire of politicians, judges, and bureaucrats to expand their power and budgets without bound.
In practice, gun control laws are only really useful as a defense against assassination by random nuts. A serious terrorist or an assassin hired by the opposition party is going to be able to get the necessary weapons, as is a serious criminal.
[Discussion of various assassinations that may have had political motive.]
You left out Martin Luther King, whose assassination was apparently politically motivated. (You don't have to hold office to be worth assassinating; repressive regimes routinely kill off the most likely opposition leaders, for example.) Also, several abortion doctors have been murdered for political/terror reasons, several civil rights activists were killed in the 50s and 60s, and I believe George Wallace was shot while running for president (I don't know the would-be assassin's reasons, but it wouldn't be hard to guess them.).
...
I'd say a lot of the reason for this is that there are usually better options available to deal with the problem. You can try to figure out how to evade dumb or evil laws, move out of the state, or even emigrate to another country to avoid them. And if the politicians in power annoy the voters enough, they *will* get voted out. Terrorist tactics are more likely to backfire on your movement (as they have on the anti-abortion movement) than win you supporters.Political assasination by populists in this country? Hardly. Political kidnapping? Nope.
Along with this, most of us realize that we don't want to live in a country where assassination, terrorist bombings, death squads, kidnappings, etc., become the standard way to bring about social and political change. The world's already full of such countries. At the first serious sign of the US becoming such a country, presumably a lot of us will be looking for another place to live.
...
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
