Susan Hogarth wrote: SH) Oh, Brian, I think you give yourself too much credit when you say you're the 'lowest scoring LP candidate': Lippe (L) F (SH
If you're saying that by being second-lowest among LPCA candidates doesn't mean I should be considered to "believe in gun control", then I thank you for this clarification. Unless Montoni agrees, he remains ignorant about what my C- implies. My low score among 2004 LPCA candidates was called out for discussion on LPCA forums, but a search of my records shows that the one email that mentioned all the 2006 LPCA scores did not even highlight Lippe's F. SH) Naturally we disagree about what 'puts the surrounding community at risk' by its mere existence, (SH Yes, any two Libertarians will average a little over three distinct opinions on a question like that. SH) You use the phrase " Individuals have the right to possess any weapon except..." which seems to be implying that you do not think soldiers or police should be carrying machine guns or grenades any more than Marc ought to be. (SH Saying that nobody has the right to do X is not an assertion that nobody may have the authority to do X. Individuals do not have the right to carry out retributive killings, but I still support the state's authority to administer a death penalty. SH) Is that really what you intended? Because if so, maybe you're more lib than I give you credit for. (SH It remains a mistake to think that libertarianism and anarchism are synonyms. SH) I suspect I can posses a hand grenade or a P90 with less risk to the surrounding community than most folks can posses an automobile. (SH Automobiles aren't designed to kill people. SH) If you want to exclude a right to own WMDs (and I agree there is no such right), you (1) should be consistent and apply the exclusion to government *first* or at least simultaneously (SH Not being an anarchist, I don't agree that the state may not do anything that a private citizen may not do. SH) and (2) recognize that 'kill[ing] multiple persons at once' is not necessarily the same thing as murder. (SH I didn't imply that it is. Any argument you offer against my multiples-persons-at-once restriction can be straightforwardly transformed into an argument against your WMD restriction. SH) But then again I suspect it's not murder you're worried about, since such petty moralistic concerns are beneath you. (SH Every time I think I have a handle on just how much cognitive dissonance you need in order to rationalize my disagreement with you and evade engagement with my actual positions, you manage to raise the bar. It's silly to suggest that not adhering to simplistic deontological absolutism is the same thing as being amoral. SH)You would apparently rather see innocents murdered one at a time than see evil people mowed down wholesale. (SH If you know of a way to disallow all and only weapons that murder innocents, I'm all ears. We minarchists have a ready answer for what should be done when evil people need wholesale mowing down. I'll give you three guesses what it is.
