RE: {AynRandinIndia:339} Digest for aynrandindia@googlegroups.com - 1 Message in 1 Topic

[Poonam Kapoor Vasudeva]

I totally disagree with this point of view.
I find it ridiculous and shameful how Ayn Rand's philosophy has been tweaked and twisted to suit the premise of this article.

Why do private citizens need to be armed to the teeth? Against what danger do they need guns in their home?
And if an intruder does come into your home - tell me - when was it possible ever to have the time and the quick reflex to go get your gun from wherever it has been safely placed ( safely from one's own children it is said often ) or the "attic" as this article suggests.....is it possible to go get that gun for self defense ? Will any intruder let it happen ? The purpose of a thief is theft and he  is well prepared for it.
He is desperate to get the task done and will allow no one an exit point and if one family member does get away - the thief quickly holds down another with dire threat .....

I want to know one thing only ..
why do people in USA need multiple guns in their homes ? If the law enforcement agencies in USA are super efficient as is believed to be true - and crime and criminals are under control - then why do private citizens need guns for that random self defense moment ?
Because it is random is it not ?
How many burglaries happen ? how many armed burglaries happen ? Is there data available for that information? It is proudly stated by Americans that in a country as developed as USA is - ordinary crime is very little - and big time crime is in any case in the realm of big time criminals in armed conflict with rival groups and of course the police. So how does it impact the private citizen living in skyscrapers or suburbs? Why do the families or indivuduals living in safety in their homes need guns in their homes ????

With reference to universities and schools -
If teachers were armed in Newton school - the thought that she or he could've hit that boy before he hit the children.
But I seriously doubt it.
He was a trained marksman as is evident from his profile. A trained marksman is far swifter than any teacher in a classroom.
It has been suggested that teachers should now be trained with gun use and armed with a gun in the classroom.
IF I am right - The danger of a gun within easy reach of children in a school does not bear thinking about.
Guards should be placed at the gates to check on intruders or any other preventive measure should be employed.

In my view  gun control should be enacted immediately.

The premise that it endangers freedom of the individual is so absurd and  I am deeply shocked to read  this article.
Poonam Vasudeva

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To: aynran...@googlegroups.com
From: aynran...@googlegroups.com
Subject: {AynRandinIndia:339} Digest for aynran...@googlegroups.com - 1 Message in 1 Topic
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 06:46:55 +0000

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/aynrandindia/topics

• With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis Is Amoral [1 Update]

 With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis Is Amoral

"Barun Mitra, New Delhi" <barun...@gmail.com> Jan 03 10:26AM -0800  

With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis Is Amoral
Harry Binswanger
Forbes magazine
1 Jan 2013
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/01/01/with-gun-control-cost-benefit-analysis-is-amoral/
 
Before the Newtown horror, I, like many people, was in conflict
regarding gun control. On the one hand, guns are dangerous. Their wide
availability means people can kill on impulse, and surely that means
more domestic quarrels turn into killings. And only anarchists would
deny Ayn Rand’s point that “the government is the means of placing the
use of retaliatory force under objective control.”
 
On the other hand, what about those who want to use guns to defend
themselves? What about people who aren’t ever going to fly into a rage
and shoot anyone in anger? And at Newtown, wouldn’t a few armed adults
have meant that the lives of many of those children could have been
spared? We don’t need statistical studies to know that banning guns
from cities doesn’t stop criminals from getting them.
 
Note that this “on the one hand” and “on the other hand” does not
arise from looking at different aspects of the same case but from
focusing on two different kinds of cases. The pro-gun side focuses on
cases of legitimate self-defense (and hunting and target-shooting).
The anti-gun side focuses on wrongful uses of guns: the Newton killer
or an enraged husband who shoots his wife (and on deaths from
accidents with guns).
 
Both sides are looking at cases that are real. The question is: how
can we take all of them into account? What is the proper way to think
about this issue?
 
The answer I’ve come to is radical: reject entirely the collectivist
mindset. Don’t look at populations; don’t ask: among 300 million
Americans, would law X result in more lives being saved than lost?
That sort of cost-benefit analysis is amoral; lives are not
balanceable one against the other. And, in practice, it leads to
endlessly battling statistical studies. I realized I should not take a
God’s eye perspective, looking down on the flock, seeking to preserve
the herd. Mankind is not a herd.
 
Junking the collectivist approach, ridding myself of the idea that the
lives of the few can be sacrificed to the lives of the many, I found
the issue almost settled itself. Taking the individualist approach, I
asked myself: what laws should the individual be subject to? What is
the principle governing the individual’s relation to the state?
 
The principle is “individual rights”–your rights and mine.
 
Rights define the proper limits of state action. They recognize the
areas within which the individual is sovereign, entitled to act on his
own judgment, free from interference by his fellow man and by the
state. The fundamental right is the right to life. Its expressions are
the right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. As the
Declaration states, government is established “to secure these
rights.”
 
To secure them against what? There is only one thing that can deprive
a man of his life, liberty, or property: physical force. Only guns,
clubs, chains, jails, or some form of nonconsensual physical contact
can kill you, injure you, or negate your ability to act on your own
judgment. The proper job of government is to protect the individual’s
rights by wielding retaliatory force against the force initiated by
criminals or foreign aggressors.
 
The issue with guns is the threat of force. But the threat of force is
force. Orders issued at gunpoint are as coercive–as rights-violating–
as laying on hands and overpowering you. (All this is explained in
more detail in Ayn Rand’s articles “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of
Government.”) The government may use force only against an objective
threat of force. Only that constitutes retaliation.
 
In particular, the government may not descend to the evil of
preventive law. The government cannot treat men as guilty until they
have proven themselves to be, for the moment, innocent. No law can
require the individual to prove that he won’t violate another’s
rights, in the absence of evidence that he is going to.
 
But this is precisely what gun control laws do. Gun control laws use
force against the individual in the absence of any specific evidence
that he is about to commit a crime. They say to the rational,
responsible gun owner: you may not have or carry a gun because others
have used them irrationally or irresponsibly. Thus, preventive law
sacrifices the rational and responsible to the irrational and
irresponsible. This is unjust and intolerable.
 
The government may coercively intervene only when there is an
objective threat that someone is going to use force. The remaining
issue is: what constitutes an objective threat?
 
An objective threat is constituted by specific evidence of a clear and
present danger to someone’s person or property. For instance, waving a
gun around (“brandishing”) is an objective threat to the individuals
in the vicinity. Having a rifle at home in the attic is not. Carrying
a concealed pistol is not (until and unless it is drawn). Yes, there
are always borderline cases, but rational standards, such as “clear
and present danger,” can be set.
 
Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population
is no evidence against you. That’s collectivist thinking. The choices
made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you will make.
 
People understand the wrongness of collectivist thinking in other
cases. They would indignantly reject the idea that a member of a given
racial group is under suspicion because 10 percent of those with his
skin color commit crimes. But the individualist approach also applies
to gun ownership and concealed carrying of guns: group ratios offer no
evidence about what a given individual will do.
 
The fact that a certain percentage of domestic quarrels end in a
shooting is no grounds for saying your ownership of a gun is a threat
to the members of your household. Likewise, the fact that there are a
certain number of accidental injuries from guns is no justification
for regulating or banning the ownership of guns for everyone. And The
tragic fact that the psychotic killer at Newtown used a gun to kill
school children is zero grounds for disarming teachers and school
personnel.
 
The government may respond only to specific threats, objectively
evident. It has no right to initiate force against the innocent. And a
gun owner is innocent until specific evidence arises that he is
threatening to initiate force.
 
Laws prohibiting or regulating guns across the board represent the
evil of preventive law and should be abolished.
 

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[Aditya Agrawal]

 Poonam

I find it ridiculous and shameful how Ayn Rand's philosophy has been tweaked and twisted to suit the premise of this article. 

This is not the first time and certainly won't be the last that a frivolous argument is advanced under the aegis of Objectivism.

It is a sad reality that most of us seem incapable of thinking independently and that is of course the reason why Ayn Rand was unique and in many senses completely isolated. 

Good Premises

Adit

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