Saturday, December 06, 2008

When knives are outlawed...

...it seems that everybody and his brother still carries knives. Imagine.

As anyone who's watched the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey knows, it's tools that separate us from the lower animals, or as we call them, "food". The more advanced tools of self defense can put a none-too-athletic accountant on par with a charging lion, or make a slip of a girl level with a linebacker. Take away the advanced tools, and we're back to the waterhole in the Kubrick flick, where the biggest, strongest, or most numerous monkeys ruled.

That's what disarmers want to do to you; put you at the mercy of the bigger monkeys.

8 comments:

Buffboy said...

"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work."

- L. Neil Smith

He can be a bit of a flake in some respects but he's dead on here. I use it as a signature line on forums I frequent. I agree with your thoughts. Shame that so many cannot grasp this simple "absolute truth" concept.

Anonymous said...

There should be study - how many gun grabbing politicians used to be playground bullies, narcissists and sociopaths?

Anonymous said...

One of those little tidbits that I intend to make a post out of one day when the proper way to beat it into several hundred words strikes me is this: it isn't tool use that enabled us to hunt that separated us from other primates. As we're discovering, both of our closest chimpy relatives do that- they use pointy sticks to stab soft little morsels out of their burrows and other hidey-holes.

It's tool use that enabled us to intimidate predators that separated us from the pack. During the time we were evolving from clever apes to dangerous hominids, the landscape was absolutely rife with larger, faster, stronger predators, nearly all of which saw us as dinner. A lone or even small group of hunters or gatherers would have been killed within the space of a day without the ability to convince those predators that we could and would put a major hurt on them if they tried it.

It's somehow even more fitting that weapons that allowed us to *defend ourselves* from predators, more than weapons that allowed us to BE the predators, were what made the difference. And yes, this applied to women too- unless she stayed sequestered in the camp behind a really big boma (which a hunter-gatherer population can't really afford), she had to be armed and dangerous, too, ESPECIALLY if she had children with her.

Anonymous said...

I mostly agree with Smith, except for the "social democracy" part. I prefer limited democracy. The world is littered with democracies hosting socialist leeches. Those who prefer the tyranny of the majority have plenty of choices; we don't need yet another one in the middle of the North American sandwich.

Barring that, keep a bleached bone handy.

Anonymous said...

They want to disarm people to keep them from not being dependent on the government to defend them.

The trouble is, then the government has no interest in defending them; it has been crippled by its laws and political correctness to defend itself - witness the Indian police who did not shoot back in Mumbai.

Then you can't sue the government, so they're off them liability hook as you die while calling 911.

atlharp said...

Gun Control is the forerunner or herald of insecure or ill formed ideology. It the careful caress by which the teeth are pulled from the people so that they may culled into a deception. Your quote:

"That's what disarmers want to do to you; put you at the mercy of the bigger monkeys."

is far more accurate than you may have intended. It is a renaissance of the primates; a return to the folly of tyranny. God said to Isreal:
"I gave you a king in my wrath."

It was something which they demanded because they could not rule amongst themselves. They were unable to govern themselves under the rule of law. Their ills and folly have been written for posterity. What will ours be compared to if we sacrifice our own ability to self-govern?

Anonymous said...

They have already surrendered, and we should do what we can to help them move into their own little world, where we wouldn't be there to confuse them.
I'm not briefed in on this: Could somebody tell me why the Czechs and Slovaks split their country?
Perhaps it would be a useful precident, around which we could fashion something similar.

Weer'd Beard said...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11490053@N08/3084176591/sizes/l/

see this bit Tam?

I guess "Butter Knives" count as "Dangerous Weapons" too