Quote of the day—Paul Barrett

Our collective dedication to free speech and a free press comes with a price: media excess that may exacerbate a social pathology such as copycat suicide-shooting sprees. Our commitment to the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to protect widespread gun ownership, has a price as well.

Paul Barrett
April 3, 2014
Another Shooting at Fort Hood: Four Blunt Points
[There are tradeoffs in nearly every decision made. That is one of the things the anti-gun people seem to always ignore. It is rare for an anti-gun person to admit there are benefits to gun ownership beyond some aspect they can dismiss as “unnecessary in today’s world” like hunting, or derisively like “making you feel like a man”.

If the other side wants to have another “conversation” about guns they need to admit there are substantial advantages to gun ownership and consider all the risks, including that to the entire Bill of Rights, by ignoring the Second Amendment. Until then they should be treated like a small child throwing a tantrum because they aren’t allowed to play with a rattlesnake.

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They apparently don’t understand that what they insist on doing has horrendous downsides as well as violating certain truths which are self-evident.—Joe]

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7 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Paul Barrett

  1. It seems that there may be slightly more discussion this time around about the fact that we have, yet again, a mass shooting in a disarmed victim zone.

  2. Personally, I would appreciate it if the media did not sensationalize mass murderers, and instead simply allowed their names, identities, and very existence fade from the public’s perception. More often than not, “I’ll be remembered” is one of the key motivating factors in such people, and there is no point in giving them what they want.

    But I will not force the media to be silent.

    On the other hand, people would force me to disarm because of those mass murderers, and therein lies the problem.

    • I think the media should only ID the SOBs by some vague initials.

      I want their manifesto destroyed, their Facebook site dispatched, their suicide note burned; all after expert FBI inspection to see if there is anything there to prevent future atrocities. Otherwise, it is not made public.

      The media is complicit when they glorify these SOBs and while I want a free press, they need to self-censor details that encourage the SOBs. Look at the obscene cover of Rolling Stone and tell me I am wrong.

      • I figure using the case number would be even better. Just an anonymous number, they don’t even get their initials in the press.

    • Good points. Dean Ing did this nicely in his novel “Soft Targets”. Highly recommended, along with every one of his books in fact.

  3. Acknowledging your very right to live has some downsides, to someone, that is IF we’re going look at things that way. If on the other hand we look as basic rights as immutable, and any isolation of those rights as crimes, then come what may, we have done the right thing.

    Looking at every aspect of human life as being on the table for discussion, allowing this, disallowing that and forcing people to do some other, all according to some cold, calculating “science” then we have truly fallen into pathology. That’s what communists, Facsists, Nazis, socialists, jihadists and Progressives do. All those sister ideologies assume that human societies can and should be controlled for the betterment of…they cannot really say. It assumes that some people are superior in their ability to see what is “wrong” and then use their superiority as a license to force people to do what is “right”. Essentially they seek to set themselves up as gods. It is an attempt to reorder human nature itself, ending up with what are essentially kings and queens ordering the function of the drones. It always ends up in mass destruction and death.

    • And that’s why I perenially refer to leftists as neo-feudalists. Because what they harken for resembles the feudal ages.

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