http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiK0vCAb3rE#t=70

Anyone remember Chariots of the Gods? The runaway bestseller suggested that Earth had been visited by “ancient astronauts” (astronauts who visited Earth a while back, not old aliens, although who knows how you date an ancient astronaut and what color roses they prefer). Swiss author and hotelier Eric von Däniken hypothesized – heavily – that aliens had blessed humanity with advanced technology. Chariots attributed various “mysteries” (e.g., the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and Easter Island’s Maoi) to these strange visitors from another planet. The theory sparked the imaginations of millions. Unfortunately for the author . . .

Swiss authorities weren’t as impressed with Mr. von Däniken’s hotel management skills. Specifically his tendency to siphon-off money from his employer to fund his “research.” Mr. von Däniken wrote the sequel Gods from Outer Space from inside prison. That tome also sold millions of copies, despite the fact that von Däniken’s theories were not only half-baked, they were fraudulent.

I remember watching a NOVA documentary debunking Chariots. In a particularly telling sequence, the public TV researchers tracked-down the Mexican artisan who created one of the mysterious objects in von Däniken’s book: a rock with an engraving of what certainly looked like an ancient astronaut. The artisan identified Mr. von Däniken as his patron. Oops.

People entranced by Chariots of the Gods? swept aside questions of authenticity. That object may not be proof that ancient astronauts stopped by our solar system to share some nifty science stuff and found a religion or two, but how do you explain Easter Island, huh? NOVA did that one too. Yes, well, even if there’s just one example of ancient astronauts, then there were ancient astronauts.  

Does that sound familiar? “If a gun control law saves just one life it’s worth it!” Proponents of civilian disarmament use that statement as a shield against the mountain of evidence against their position. Assuming we’re talking about laws that attempt to prevent firearms-related crime, rather than laws that punish bad guys for using a firearm in the commission of a crime, it’s no less pseudo-scientific than Chariots of the Gods? How do you know a gun control law saved anyone’s life? 

You can’t. How can a scientific study ascertain how many people didn’t commit a firearms-related crime because it was too hard to get a gun? Sure, biased researchers might unearth a few bad guys who’d make that statement. But then there are plenty of people who claim to have seen Yeti, too. At the same time, gun control advocates who rely on the “one life saved” justification for gun control singularly, spectacularly fail to take account of the scientific data on lives saved by a lack of gun control.

With apologies to Stevie Wonder, humans have a natural desire to believe in things that they don’t understand. To be fair, some people on the other side of the gun “debate” –  Americans who seek to defend and extend their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms – are also superstitious. There’s a strong tendency amongst gun rights supporters to believe that there’s a vast, secret and coordinated campaign to deprive them of their guns and gun rights.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no problem with the “vast” part of that equation. God knows there are plenty of powerful proponents of civilian disarmament in this great nation of ours, looking to “sell” the idea of gun control. From legions of left-leaning journalists who fill the airwaves with anti-gun agitprop, to regiments of right-leaning politicians who pay lip service to the Second Amendment even as they undermine it, our society is infested with antis.

And yes, these once and future gun grabbers coordinate with each other. Mayor Bloomberg’s recent purchase of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Americans for Responsible Solutions’ political action committee campaign for pro-gun control pols, the Violence Policy Center’s relentless spoon-feeding of “stories” to supportive journalists – proof positive that the antis are working with each other to deprive Americans of their gun rights.

But secret they are not. All of these groups are out there, in public, doing the disarmament thing. You can see them in the mainstream media and watch them perpetuating defenselessness in legislative chambers. Even the infrequently mentioned Joyce Foundation has a web page outlining their gun control agenda.

So why do gun rights advocates believe there are huge, hidden forces at work? You know: the DHS is buying up all the ammo to stop Americans from having any gun food. The United Nations’ blue-helmeted goons are coming for our guns. George Soros bought the Freedom Group to shut it down. The DHS is preparing internment camps for gun owners. Google biased its search engine to “hide” the Second Amendment from web searches.

The answer: gun ownership can tap into and inspire a near-religious devotion to the cause of freedom and liberty. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; clinging to your guns and your religion is an excellent survival strategy. But this dedication can go over the line into paranormal paranoia, creating a need for a seemingly superhuman opposing force. Gun rights groups seeking public funding do nothing to temper this tendency and much to stimulate it.

I reckon its better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Or, if you prefer, it’s better to fight the devil that exists than to take on the devil that doesn’t. That said, Chariots of the Gods? inspired enormous popular interest in history, archaeology and space travel. If conspiracy theories inspire Americans to get off their asses and guard their right to keep and bear arms, I’m OK with it. Meanwhile, here’s my question for Google: how can you complain about Chinese censorship and bar firearms websites from AdWords?

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81 COMMENTS

  1. Because you’re okay with the potential results of conspiracy theories(more people sticking up for freedom) doesn’t mean that the theories are any less bogus. Aren’t we the ones that are supposed to keep the facts on our side?

  2. I’m not the first to notice that the pro-gun and anti-gun organizations need each other to prosper. Fear sells.

    • Not quite.

      For a couple centuries, arms were available and those who wished to generally had ’em.

      There was no “pro gun” movement ’til folks in high places decided that the Constitution was a salad bar from which to pick and choose.

      We’d gladly go away were the forces of Statism to dissipate. Unlike them, we have no real desire to prosper. We’d like sanity to prevail all by itself.

      The bad people are real, and I sleep better knowing that while in the inner city tomorrow I’ll have Mr. Tokarev at my side.

      I sell alarms. I sell peace of mind. I do not sell or prey on fear. Same thing.

      Being armed is a reason to not fear.

      • Bad guys will generally pick another house if they see an ADT or similar sign. And its a very good thing be alerted when someone enters your house. I personally rely more on the ancient pact between man and canine for that, but not everyone likes dogs (and dogs won’t call the cops if someone breaks in while you are away).

        Regardless, if people think an alarm system alone will save them from a person intent on doing them harm, they are fooling themselves. Being alert to a potential threat is necessary but not sufficient. I know you would agree with that, but I hope you are able to share that thought with your customers.

    • Guns would sell just fine without anti folks, they help fan the fires, but the flames are there none the less

    • Dr., when the presidents and legislators gin up a new enemy to fear every time the old one goes caput, you can’t blame ordinary folk for borrowing a successful tactic. We’re spending trillions, so far, to build the infrastructure of a police state. I’d rather admit that another WTC might get blown up if we lacked such pervasive surveillance. Who wants to be an extra-safe cow with freedom only to do what the legislators demand from time to time. It doesn’t sound attractive to me. It does sound attractive to the banks, finance companies, and holding company HQ’s massed in a few cities, like Chicago, NYC, and SF….with their truly fun low-tax games played off shore.

      For all the blather about Swiss bank leaks, the truly rich can work around the taxes with lawyers, Singapore, Bermuda, the Caymans, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Nevada anonymous corps, Delaware holding corps with off-shore subsidiaries, and so forth.

      But guns? Can’t have guns! A threat to the system! No, The threat to the system is the leak of profits and taxable transactions to off-shore locations, while the subsidies keep flowing to the holding companies and domestic subsidiaries, whether in agriculture, energy, or finance. As a famous general recently said “the greatest domestic security vulnerability of the US is its national debt.” Pretty senior guy to call a worry-wort or paranoid. The national debt is the excess of spending to keep the masses and corps happy over the taxes collected from people who actually are making, owning, the profits. Our domestic security, in other words, is threatened by unwillingness to tax as we spend or spend only as we tax, and not by guns.

      • There is no possible tax scheme to cover the spending of the U.S. government currently. The rich simply don’t have enough money.

        • Yes, though the corporations do. Still, I accept your comment as true. WSJ and Financial Times articles repeatedly cover this ground. I have no doubt the ‘solution’ will be to push the nation onto a VAT tax, national value-added (sales) tax. And the corps will push their HI costs out to ACA/Obamacare, and they’ll threaten to move offshore as more than a few individuals have. The point being, the gun-related point, after all this, is that gun ‘control’ is about keeping the 70% controllable as these other events come to be. It isn’t about guns being a problem, from any other point of view.

    • I am sorry Doctor, but that does not exactly fly. Sure, in any cultural/values debate, the two sides need one another as boogie men and to raise funds. However, guns existed in civil society for a long time before efforts arose to disarm the public. Those efforts came about as the urban elites came to power in media and academia and DC garnered increasing power over the people and the states. As fewer Americans had guns in their lives (urbanites, suburbanites), they were easily convinced that the evils of inner city gun violence, and random suburban gun violence, were due to the ownership of guns generally in our society. Not that societal changes had created an underclass and a gang/drug culture that used illegally obtained guns illegally.

      This is akin to blaming the existence of the AR-15 design (introduced to civilian market in mid-1960s) for the rise of the suburban rampage killer, even though the first use of an AR in such a massacre was not until the mid-2000s. Or even guns generally given the ubiquity of guns up through the early 1970s but the rise of the stranger-focused, non-workplace rampage killer, did not come about until the early to mid-1980s.

      The rise of the pro gun rights “industry” did not occur until someone came along to threaten those rights. The NRA preexisted the gun control movement but morphed when the threat materialized.

    • The NRA for most of its existence was for hunters rights and really did not get involved with gun rights until people wanted to take away guns.

      Many of the gun rights group both national and grass roots began with the first AWB. Many of them existed prior to that as more as enthusiasts groups.

      The Civilian Disarmament groups created much of the gun rights groups. The Civilian Disarmament Groups, look at Gifford’s Group and Watts MDA have been created as money making ventures for certain persons. Gifford et al has book coming out. The all make personal money from speaking engagements. They purely exist for the betterment of themselves and born from Newtown and other tragedy created by nut jobs. If you follow the money, the money collected by gun rights group usually funnel into law suites for defending rights. The Civilian Disarmament Groups either do not collect money or use the platform to promote themselves.

      Speaking solely for myself, I hate the political aspects and I would not be as active as I am now if The Civilian Disarmament Groups were not so involved and had all the special access to government that they do.

      Most gun owners want to be left alone, allowed to have their guns with little restrictions and go shooting on the weekends at the range instead of constantly writing to politicians, organizing to help politicians that support 2a or going to rallies.

      The Civilian Disarmament Groups want to take away our rights, so we exist to prevent that from happening. If the politicians had an once of sense, followed the constitution, were not in bed with the lower courts and in general understood that gun owners are law abiding people, then we would not have this waste of time with the battle.

      As the article states, no gun control laws will save even one life because someone who is so focused to do harm will do so with or without a gun. The laws only restrict those who have done nothing. Public safety is a ruse. There is an Italian phrase that goes “the good always pay for the bad” and in gun rights this is true.

      The fight unfortunately will never be over. There will be another school shooting or mass shooting as long as there are “gun free zones” and the cycle of tug-of-war on gun rights will start again.

      • I agree with every word save the first sentence, in that for most of my youth in the Fifties the NRA was constantly trumpeting about taking away our gun rights (when you could obtain a .45 by direct mail from the NRA for the cost of a meal at Denny’s now). I’d scratch my head and wonder what that was all about. Then Kennedy was shot and Johnson et al. pushed a bill that would amount to total confiscation. It failed and the sponsor was defeated at the next election. We did, however, get a watered-down version for the first time requiring FFL’s and limited registration, but things more or less settled down but NRA continued to warn the Aunties were out to disarm the public. No immediate threat, however, and thus no interest. Then Clinton came along and I finally learned that yes, the people setting policy for the Democratic Party and controlling the money spigot hate guns. It’s a visceral hatred, based on irrational fear and physical cowardice, and they have no intention of stopping. IMO they should pack up and move to Canada, or if that’s too cold, Mexico, where guns are illegal. If they want to escape gun violence, well, good luck and let me know how that works out for you.

        Anyway, I’m an old geezer and I can remember the NRA opposing gun confiscation that far back. I just wasn’t buying it, but you can teach a monkey to fly if you’ve got enough bananas and I finally came around.

  3. Another parallel: the “vast patterns, discernible only from the air” and “was this a spaceport?” pictures are of spiders, birds and so-on drawn on the “massive” scale of twenty to thirty feet across. The “areal views” of portions of these “mysterious” figures were taken from chest height.

    Every life “saved” by civilian disarmament is trumped up to pretentious and ridiculous proportions, as are the volume of “gun crimes” and percentage of Americans who support “common sense” restrictions.

    There are lots of parallels between fiction and fiction.

    As for that Yeti, I’d rather not discuss it. Too many bad memories there…

      • I refer specifically to the figures referenced in the book.

        I could be wrong about some of ’em, but sincerely doubt it; my dear ol’ pappy was into that bravo sierra, and I read the book as a kid.

        Even then, i thought and said “Yeah, right.”

        That spider – the “possible taxiway and parking slots for air/spacecraft” – was ten metres tops.

        • EDIT: Not spider – that’s bigger – but the wing of a “Thunderbird.”

          Very convincing – if the aliens flew craft with a two foot wingspan

      • Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the Nazca lines WERE intended as a communication to some being in the sky. That said, as a Christian I don’t count them as being too different than a 100 foot Jesus on a hill outside of Rio. Ancient astronauts, no. Message/tribute to whatever they worshipped, sure.

  4. History is replete with conspiracies, and the graveyards are filled to overflowing with those who refused to believe in them.

    • While that may be true, I think there are a lot of “lone wolves” doing their little bit to further gun control. If you are a programmer at Google and hate guns (that statement is probably much more profound than people realize), why not manipulate search results? No one at Google will probably ever know. And even if someone at Google did find out, they would probably give the programmer an attaboy and a raise.

      I picture the same thing happening all over the place. That is not a conspiracy in my mind … rather it is an undirected “grass roots” movement in many respects. It just happens to be that people who love and advocate for gun control happen to dominate entertainment, media, academia, and urban government (especially bureaucrats).

      • It just happens to be that people who love and advocate for gun control happen to dominate entertainment, media, academia, and urban government (especially bureaucrats).

        Those same groups are heavily democratic and progressive. To be part of that world you must endorse and accept “collectivism” and “emotional IQ”. Free thinking and independent thinking is not accepted. If you do not agree with the group you are publically shamed, cut-off, ostracized, shunned, no longer part of social groups and depending on your industry, perhaps will never find another job again. Many in that group have no clue about 2a, gun rights history and live in a reality distortion field different than the common man. They have been socially trained over the years to follow the group think or die. In a way they are all mentally weak afraid to seek out new ideas or friends that do not follow the collective. Look Gov. Cuomo who stated that conservative thinking in not welcome in NY. The democrats purport to accept “everyone” except when they don’t. Very few in the liberal press even reported on his speech. Equality in democratic circles is a myth.

        You do not have to go to far off places to understand the influence. I see it at work with parents who are afraid to do or say something that they truly believe in because “so and so from the PTA would have revenge on them or their children” — You see it with parents telling their kids to follow along with a wrong idea so that they get a good grade even when the information is wrong. I personally know a parent who would not challenge a grade school teacher who was teaching that the USA has 51 states — she included Puerto Rico as a 51st state. The fear was to be left out of the collective.

        It takes strength to go against the collective and few are willing. It is so much easier to make believe.

        Some this happens in gun rights groups as well — nobody is immune

  5. Ahhhronold put it best when he said “Ja, but they were all bad”. Doesn’t matter what shape or form they take, they need to be stopped. You can’t get too paranormal paranoid for me when it comes to the guy with a cell phone & a pen. I’ll leave it at that “new policy & all”

  6. I got the same result as in the video. HOWEVER, despite what the robot girl tells you, the first link that comes up is the wikipedia article for the actual second amendment. Also, if you say “second amendment of the constitution” robot girl gets it correct.

    • Which is as it should be; extraneous words – and in the search as spoken “of the Constitution” is extraneous – demote a result.

      The band is simply “Second Ammendment,” and thus most closely matches the given search criteria.

      No evil conspiracy is needed as regards Google.

  7. Gun control usually ends badly for the controlled.
    That’s why it’s so easy to see conspiracy in the gun control agenda.

  8. Conspire, from the Latin for breathe together – plotting and merging in purpose even at the lowest level.

    No anti operates in a vacuum.

  11. Technically, your usage of “theorized” in the first paragraph should be “hypothesized”. Might not matter to non-science-y types, but I think the technical difference applies here.

    Edited

  14. I do not see a grand conspiracy. I see a lot of movement and lying/hiding about ultimate objectives, which is something every anti-gun group embraces – we just want universal background checks. What they mean is “this year, UBCs, next year all semi-autos, and the year after that…” It is hard, though, to not believe there is a grand progressive conspiracy. Some kind of ultimate play over centuries to install a new world order. It makes for cool videos with creepy soundtracks on youtube, which is fun late at night.

    I reckon the antis are actually pretty much like ants. They work together to achieve some goal, each driven forward or backward by the pheromones (fear, lust for power, etc.) exuded by the others. What they do share, though, is an agenda and will to exercise power over those they consider too stupid or ignorant to be able to govern themselves. Namely, they want to control us, or rather to enable a state they envision as being in control.

    And just like a bunch of ants, they just keep plugging away, unaware of the facts of their environment, reacting only to the messages they pass back and forth to each other. I’d pity their blind and insect-like behavior except that no one that power hungry deserves pity, just a boot. But stand back far enough and the movements of all those busy little ants sure looks like something in the background is controlling them. Either way, Second Amendment says what it means and means what it says, and that is what we can embrace in our struggle with those lusty, power-seeking insects.

    • I basically agree in part. However, the magic in being an anti is always about the money. Every anti I’ve ever looked into was either trying as a sideline to impress grant issuers (you know, the foundations with big money) or trying directly to sustain funding specifically to be a grant- or donation-receiving not-for-profit. And an NFP is basically just an organization that pays out all its profits to its employees and contractors. This applies to every group from the NFL and American Cancer Society to MDA.

      What is going on isn’t a “conspiracy” in the US. Rather it is simply the natural coalescing of interests. Lots of big money people come independently to the same goals and occasional share, discuss, and work together: They want immigration to sustain cheap labor (the opposite of what makes Norway, Sweden, and Denmark work). They want a mish-mash population of diversity, so that no group of “ordinary” folks feels kinship to work together and help each other. The left wants less guns because labor demonstrations and interest-group demonstrations seem less safe if their mass action meets up with, well, guns. The corporate types basically agree. No powerful minority wants guns to be common, and for essentially the same reasons: Guns leave too much last-resort power in the hands of the 70%. It’s all simple and obvious. Even the ACA is something the far-left and the corporates agree on, for different reasons. One wants the subsidies for their people.. The other wants to dump HI off the corporate income statement.

    • Come on!

      The search produced exactly the correct results; extraneous words – and in the search as spoken “of the Constitution” is extraneous – demote a result.

      The band is simply “Second Ammendment,” and thus most closely matches the given search criteria.

      Since there’s no movie billed as “First Ammendment” or television programme titled “Fifth Amendment,” for example, those searches returned the expected results.

      The demonstration is amusing, but logically flawed; no evil conspiracy is needed as regards Google. Move along.

      • ‘pure google’ = ‘pure evil’. trust it at your peril.
        startpage everything from now on.

    • Bing sucks. Bing sucks bad.

      Use Start Page; no recording of your IP. No IP, anonymous surfing.

      Use Start Page, people. It works.

  16. I love watching conspiracy theory shows and videos, they are a guilty pleasure. I find them to be very entertaining because they usually take a huge suspension of reality to be believable and stretch the facts to fit the narrative. (Sound familiar?) I think most shows on the History channel are templates. Take a template like “Ancient Aliens” or “Ancient Cultures” and then pick and choose your “facts” to create the 1 hour of entertainment. You can even use the exact same show minus mentioning Aliens and minus a few “experts”.

    Is there some conspiracy to strip our guns from us? I doubt it, but there are a lot of individuals who think they are helping and saving the world with their individual or small group actions to ban most or all guns from civilian ownership. They are misguided or refuse to take an objective look at the facts and statistics.

    • Umm…there are books published on how to “effectively message” for the cause of gun control. One a style guide for journalists suggesting to use the phrase “killed by guns” instead of “with guns” specifically for the purpose creating a negative emotional association with guns in the reader.

      I think the anti movement contains groups of people who meet or have conference calls to discuss strategies of bringing about more gun control, which is a conspiracy in my mind.

  17. “gun ownership can tap into and inspire a near-religious devotion to the cause of freedom and liberty. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; clinging to your guns and your religion is an excellent survival strategy. But this dedication can go over the line into paranormal paranoia, creating a need for a seemingly superhuman opposing force.”

    Yes and no. Once you start losing your grip on reality, no matter how noble or reasonable your original position, well, then yes, pretty much by definition you’ve lost it. What you say, feel, find or believe at that point becomes immaterial because it cannot be trusted as an objective assessment of reality.

    Still, the serious prevalence of that isn’t very high; some enduring speculative Internet memes notwithstanding. Besides, how do *you* know these conspiracy theories aren’t true? I happen not to believe in them, but how do *I* know?

    Perhaps if the Devil did not exist, it would be necessary, or at least expedient, to invent him. Regardless whether he does, the fact is that dictators, death camps and storm troopers do exist in this world. THEIR reality evinces sufficient evil in our midst to make moot, for making superfluous, debates over particular conspiracy theories, and to warrant existential zeal in defending freedom.

  18. Like, when the government faked the moon landing on September 11th, man, JFK’s real killer was, like, aliens, right? Skull and Bones and the Masons and the Illuminati are all part of the reptilian shape-shifter plan, man. Our twin planet, man, it is, like, coming. When Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch, it was totally a signal, man. You gotta, like, get tin foil to cover your guns so the polymer doesn’t melt when the EMP burst downs the grid, and, like, they come for our weed and powdered milk. Vaccines! Chemtrails! Or, worst of all, a coordinated public campaign to INFRINGE constitutional and natural rights incrementally. Because that last one is real, legit, and… totally a fight we can win. Rationally and peacefully. Tinfoil hats off, thinking caps on. TTAG rocks! At least that’s what the voices keep saying. Do you hear them too?

    • Laugh. So true. “You can’t see it, but it’s there, and will destroy the world! Science says so. Not that science. This science over here.” When I heard Kerry’s lecture to the Indonesians I burst out laughing. He’s telling a third world country they can’t burn fuel, while he and his pals have been pushing to let China burn as much as they damned want, so long as it’s powering the export factories owned or leased by US companies.

      The hypocrisy is just so blatant, so ‘everhwhere,’ and so self-serving. Don’t lecture the Indonesians. Lecture the Chinese, and impose on US companies the duty to not accept dirty Chinese electric power. Then I’ll believe it isn’t electioneering BS. Everybody wants Name Recognition. They don’t care how they get it. Because US voters pull the lever for the name they know best, without memory of exactly what the person stands for. Charming reality.

      • Q: How many climate deniers does it take to change a lightnulb?

        A1: Well, since their eyes are closed and they’re in the dark…

        A2: The bulb’s fine.

      • The term “climate deniers” is pure political BS, meant to accuse anyone not signing on to the Global Warming, er, Climate Change agenda as akin to Holocaust Deniers.

        The problem? The Climate Change folks are primarily “let’s financialize yet another piece of the real economy” people. The problems of pollution, of ‘green house gases,’ of encouraging efficient consumption of energy, are more about economics than climate change. Water vapor is the big problem in the green house arena. Poverty from over-consuming carbon due to building society around some inefficient machines should be the natural target. Our way of life, even our simple timing of our day and design of our roads, leads to massive increases in energy use over what would be closer to optimum.

        And no, I don’t think the “extreme weather due to green house gasses” is good, meaning clear, science. I grew up with a ‘science’ that feared the coming ice-age. I’ve had to listen to guys flying Gulf Stream 4’s with out-of-date engines, maintaining three big houses, tell me energy use is the problem. I say, “lead by example, then come back and talk about energy efficiency.” I have geo heat in two of my houses already, one in Stockholm and one in Pennsylvania. Gore hasn’t come close.

  20. Yeah, ‘Chariots of the Gods’ it was so full of lies it motivate somebody to write the book “Crash Go the Chariots” completely debunking it, pointing out things like

    – instead of quoting the Bible, Daniken starts a statement with he seems to remember the Bible stating something that it doesn’t in any standard translation. Good research that.
    – Quotes Thor Heyerdahl’s book ‘Kon Tiki’ about how Thor is so amazed and can’t believe primitive men could have made the statues. While not mentioning the part of the book where a bunch of locals go down to a quarry, carve out a statue using the tools lying around, and place it using only primitive technology.

  21. From the Archives:

    If I could accomplish but one task, it would be to impress upon the Minds of as many as possible an understanding of but three words common to the so-called English language.
    Conscience, definable in part as, ‘a quality present within most every person providing the potential to serve the individual in some circumstances as a restraint upon certain actions, and in other circumstances as a calling to act’.
    Morality, definable in part as, ‘a simple code of individual thought and conduct’.
    Rights, definable in part as, ‘the natural status of each person’.

    The simple code of Moral conduct merely requires that each person conduct oneself in a manner as to avoid intentionally violating the ‘Rights’ of another person or persons.

    An actual criminal act may be considered as based upon the intentional violation of a person’s actual ’Rights’.

    Do No Harm / Successfully Defend

  23. Mr Farago nails it. There is no vast, secret conspiracy against firearms ownership. Hell, you can’t get them to shut the f**k up about their plans to strip Americans of our God given, Constitutionally protected rights. All of our rights, not just firearms. 2nd A is just the one they screech endlessly without end about. They make no secret of their utter contempt for the entire US Constitution. As long as THEY get to keep rights given to them by government, oh, and continue killing babies. The only thing they are more determined to do than strip Americans of our rights is continue to force American citizens to pay for their genocide against minority infants. No secrets about any of this anti-human, anti-American sh*t.

  24. I’ll see the Anti side of the argument when they come up with a reliable plan to disarm the bad guys first. Until then, Be Prepared is more than just a BSA motto.

    • We’ll know when civilian disarmament is successful – the police will be disarmed, too. If criminals don’t have guns, then police officers don’t need them either. It’ll be a kinder, gentler society and we’ll be rid of any need for them. The only possible use for arming authority figures would be intimidation, and we live in a Constitutional republic, right? What could go wrong? LOL

  25. I want to comment directly to the ‘secret’ part of the OP.

    While it’s clear that there are groups working openly to restrict the RKBA I don’t consider it a ‘conspiracy theory’ to suspect that there are other groups with similar goals of which we are not aware. Take the recent articles about PepsiCo. There is a vast corporation who appears to have come out on the side of civilian disarmament.

    I’ll freely admit that some of what I read in the comments here has my eyes rolling and my head shaking, but I think it’s either overly broad of naïve to say that all the forces arrayed against the RKBA are out in the open and that none operate secretively.

    I further submit that it is the very doublespeak used by those open disarmament groups that puts people in such a mind for conspiracy theories; Compromise=give us some of what we want and you get nothing, Safety=less guns, Common Sense=whatever we think is right, Fact=something we made up. . . the list goes on forever. Astroturf organizations funded by billionaires and closed comments on every site, misrepresented goals and shadowy allegiances. These aren’t theories, there is an actual conspiracy (though it’s level of both secrecy and organization are debatable) to deny us the RKBA.

    I consider myself a level headed sort and certainly a skeptic, but, as they say, it’s not paranoia if ‘they’ really are out to get you.

  27. And this is exactly why my strategy, when responding to a lefties shriek of “IF IT SAVES JUST ONE LIFE!!” is this:

    1. I can tally the exact numbers of children and even give you some names of children saved by defensive gun use.
    2. You cannot give me one number nor name one child “saved” by gun control.
    3. Therefore if “it” saves one life then “it” must be a gun.

    You cannot quantify things that have been “prevented” through prohibition.

    • ‘You cannot quantify things that have been “prevented” through prohibition’

      Exactly; its a perfect example of what scientists and philosophers call the “Elephant Repellent” fallacy.

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