US Philadelphia Student Carrying Legal Firearm Shoots It Out

[JimC]

We had an out of stater here a few years ago bring in his harvest to a local butcher--he had shot a llama and thought it was an elk.

How did you get llamas in the wild in Montana?

Hutterite llamas.
Livestock is pastured on leased public lands.
Many ranches include wilderness.

Llamas are being included in cattle herds, because they really hate wolves and will patrol their herd and make life difficult for wolves. The wolves avoid herds with llamas, donkeys or people around.

In Victoria, quite a few farmers are including a couple of Alpacas with their sheep; they serve the same function as a fox deterrent around lambing time.

[MrJonno]

Yes, suicide is the most essential and important exercise of one's natural, unalienable rights and the law should respect this

Luckily there is no such thing as natural / unalienable rights and we can concentrate on actually have a civilized society that looks out for those who are vulnerable

[Gallstones]

Who cares about suicide? It's a person's civil right to commit suicide, and it's just as important that they have a convenient and effective method of doing so. To deny a person the right to kill themselves when their lives become intolerable is to enslave them to the needs and desires of others. Suicide is the ultimate expression of individual liberty, and must be preserved as such. You cannot be made a slave if you have the means, if all else fails, to kill yourself.

Suicide statistics can't begin to be used as a justification for banning guns because people intent on suicide will find some other method, including throwing themselves in front of trains or off highway bridges.

This is a nonsense argument.

Personal liberty hmm , try a sympton of serious mental illness. Sure for a few its a rational decision (terminal physicall illness with a large amount of pain) but for most people who survive its something they regret and are glad they didnt succeed.

So what if they do? Many more succeed and are probably glad they did. "Serious mental illness" is a tautological definition when it comes to suicide because the mental health community defines anyone who has suicidal ideology as mentally ill. Problem is, it may not be mental illness at all, it may be perfectly rational depression and a decision to end an unbearable life.

It may be that their life is not really that unbearable, but it's not up to you or I, or anyone else, to forcibly intervene in the free choices of others as regards their decision to end their lives. One may certainly counsel and advise, but in the end the decision is up to the individual and must be respected. It's their life.

One of the most egregious abuses of individual liberty comes when some nitwit says "but think of your family, they (or I) will miss you and be hurt if you die." How grossly selfish and manipulated, as if the other person is obliged to continue to suffer unbearable pain and sorrow just to suit the emotional needs of others.

Yes, suicide is the most essential and important exercise of one's natural, unalienable rights and the law should respect this, but it doesn't. Anti-suicide laws originated in the concept that the individual does not own himself, but rather he is a vassal of the king or a subject of the government and cannot be allowed to escape his or her duty to the king or the government, to the economic and social detriment of the society, by committing suicide. It's just another form of societal slavery.

Only when any adult can go into a pharmacy and obtain a killing drug on demand will we truly be free.

I want to use this for a signature. Please?

[Gallstones]

Yes, suicide is the most essential and important exercise of one's natural, unalienable rights and the law should respect this

Luckily there is no such thing as natural / unalienable rights and we can concentrate on actually have a civilized society that looks out for those who are vulnerable

Should suicides be prevented?
If so, how?

[Seth]

Yes, suicide is the most essential and important exercise of one's natural, unalienable rights and the law should respect this

Luckily there is no such thing as natural / unalienable rights and we can concentrate on actually have a civilized society that looks out for those who are vulnerable

...and enslaves everyone to the needs of the state.

Oh, and I encourage you to drop by and try to infringe on my natural, unalienable right to keep and bear arms. Drop by any time. Really. But have your funeral arrangements prepared before you show up.

[Seth]

Who cares about suicide? It's a person's civil right to commit suicide, and it's just as important that they have a convenient and effective method of doing so. To deny a person the right to kill themselves when their lives become intolerable is to enslave them to the needs and desires of others. Suicide is the ultimate expression of individual liberty, and must be preserved as such. You cannot be made a slave if you have the means, if all else fails, to kill yourself.

Suicide statistics can't begin to be used as a justification for banning guns because people intent on suicide will find some other method, including throwing themselves in front of trains or off highway bridges.

This is a nonsense argument.

Personal liberty hmm , try a sympton of serious mental illness. Sure for a few its a rational decision (terminal physicall illness with a large amount of pain) but for most people who survive its something they regret and are glad they didnt succeed.

So what if they do? Many more succeed and are probably glad they did. "Serious mental illness" is a tautological definition when it comes to suicide because the mental health community defines anyone who has suicidal ideology as mentally ill. Problem is, it may not be mental illness at all, it may be perfectly rational depression and a decision to end an unbearable life.

It may be that their life is not really that unbearable, but it's not up to you or I, or anyone else, to forcibly intervene in the free choices of others as regards their decision to end their lives. One may certainly counsel and advise, but in the end the decision is up to the individual and must be respected. It's their life.

One of the most egregious abuses of individual liberty comes when some nitwit says "but think of your family, they (or I) will miss you and be hurt if you die." How grossly selfish and manipulated, as if the other person is obliged to continue to suffer unbearable pain and sorrow just to suit the emotional needs of others.

Yes, suicide is the most essential and important exercise of one's natural, unalienable rights and the law should respect this, but it doesn't. Anti-suicide laws originated in the concept that the individual does not own himself, but rather he is a vassal of the king or a subject of the government and cannot be allowed to escape his or her duty to the king or the government, to the economic and social detriment of the society, by committing suicide. It's just another form of societal slavery.

Only when any adult can go into a pharmacy and obtain a killing drug on demand will we truly be free.

I want to use this for a signature. Please?

Fine by me.

[Seth]

Interesting, 'Zilla. Esp the bit about not darting them.

We don't talk to them, give them man-made things as toys or treats, etc. We had a female shot in Phoenix earlier in the year, she was inside the city limits for some damn reason. Given the "see wolf, kill wolf" mentality of some folks the farther from humans they want to be, the better.

Wolf kills are investigated, and if we catch the poacher we prosecute them.

Sad thing that they have to be investigated at all.

I agree. I mean really, there are a fuck-load of wolves in the world, and they don't begin to be endangered, so why bother to investigate a wolf killing to any greater degree than any other potential poaching incident? They are just wolves, and there's lots of them around.

[Seth]

We had an out of stater here a few years ago bring in his harvest to a local butcher--he had shot a llama and thought it was an elk.

How did you get llamas in the wild in Montana?

Hutterite llamas.
Livestock is pastured on leased public lands.
Many ranches include wilderness.

Llamas are being included in cattle herds, because they really hate wolves and will patrol their herd and make life difficult for wolves. The wolves avoid herds with llamas, donkeys or people around.

Better to simply eliminate any wolves who decide that cattle or sheep are prey.

[Seth]

I find it funny how we instantly recognize wild wolves, where they could theoretically be mistaken for some breed of dog... but feral dogs rarely get shot, unless they manage to get real obnoxious first.

I've seen a dozen feral dogs shot in a single day. In Indiana.

'cause they were bothering livestock? or because you were with a guy who had a serious case of animal cruelty?

Killing feral dogs is no more "animal cruelty" than killing a chicken or a cow is. Feral dogs are dangerous, disease-ridden, and costly to society, and shooting them is a perfectly acceptable way of ridding the community of vermin, just like shooting rats or feral cats is.

Just because they belong to a domesticated species doesn't mean that a particular dog is domesticated. I have no compunctions at all about shooting feral dogs or cats, and it's not "cruelty" to do so. What's fucking stupid is capturing feral cats and dogs and then trying to adopt them out. For fuck's sake, save everyone a lot of money and put a .22 in their heads, there's too many dogs running around without homes as it is.

[Robert_S]

I started a new thread about suicide:

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=31652

[Hermit]

For what it's worth, I doubt banning firearms does much towards reducing violent crime. The nutters are the problem, not the guns.
Banning guns in a bid to stop violent crime seems to me to be the same logic as banning dessert spoons to cure obesity.

I looked statistics on homicide in Australia up. Yes, after our Prime Minister effectively banned firearms, the percentage of homicides using firearms decreased drastically, but the growth rate of homicides on a per capita basis in the three following years was the same as in the three preceding ones. On the other hand, violent crimes did not increase on the grounds that the criminals had no armed lawful citizen to fear either. So, basically, the ban probably made no difference either way.

Actually, it made a substantial difference. It disarmed innumerable people who might have been able to use their lawfully-owned firearms to prevent their murder.

And that's the point, not abstract statistical arguments. The statistical argument is completely fallacious and immoral...

Nice piece of work, Seth. You ask people for data sets, but when they contradict your assertions, like the one I provided, you dismiss them as utterly irrelevant. The truth of the matter is that in the year gun control laws were tightened, the homicide rate in Australia was 1.81 per 100,000 of our population. Eleven years on the rate stands at 1.3. If disarming the Australian people results in them being "injured or killed by their masters...the armed criminals of their society", to quote your assertion, wouldn't such an assertion require some evidence? Such as an increase in the homicide rate?

[Seth]

For what it's worth, I doubt banning firearms does much towards reducing violent crime. The nutters are the problem, not the guns.
Banning guns in a bid to stop violent crime seems to me to be the same logic as banning dessert spoons to cure obesity.

I looked statistics on homicide in Australia up. Yes, after our Prime Minister effectively banned firearms, the percentage of homicides using firearms decreased drastically, but the growth rate of homicides on a per capita basis in the three following years was the same as in the three preceding ones. On the other hand, violent crimes did not increase on the grounds that the criminals had no armed lawful citizen to fear either. So, basically, the ban probably made no difference either way.

Actually, it made a substantial difference. It disarmed innumerable people who might have been able to use their lawfully-owned firearms to prevent their murder.

And that's the point, not abstract statistical arguments. The statistical argument is completely fallacious and immoral...

Nice piece of work, Seth. You ask people for data sets, but when they contradict your assertions, like the one I provided, you dismiss them as utterly irrelevant. The truth of the matter is that in the year gun control laws were tightened, the homicide rate in Australia was 1.81 per 100,000 of our population. Eleven years on the rate stands at 1.3. If disarming the Australian people results in them being "injured or killed by their masters...the armed criminals of their society", to quote your assertion, wouldn't such an assertion require some evidence? Such as an increase in the homicide rate?

Not necessarily. That the rate declined slightly may be due to many things. Correlation is not causation in all cases. But what is absolutely true is that every person who was murdered in Australia or the UK died unnecessarily because their government disarmed everyone and considers them to be nothing more than an "acceptable collateral damage" in their quest to ban firearms. Each and every one of those individuals had a natural, inherent right to keep and bear arms so that they could defend themselves against their killers, and you'll NEVER KNOW how many of them might or would have been saved, and how many other crimes of assault and rape might have been prevented if guns had not been banned.

Our experiment with that demonstrates that the more law-abiding civilians there are who go about armed, the lower the violent crime rate is. But more importantly, each of them, where it's legal, gets the chance to decide for themselves whether they wish to carry a gun, rather than some government bureaucrat deciding for them and turning them into a statistic rather than respecting their humanity.

And that's the point: you will never know how many of the people murdered in gun-banning countries might today be alive if they had not been deliberately disarmed by their government, and thus you don't know how much LOWER the murder rate would have been. And if even ONE of them could have saved his or her life, it would fully justify honoring the right of every person to effective self defense against violent crime.

It's great to toss statistics around, until it's you, your wife, or your children who are the victims who make up the statistic because nobody but the bad guys had weapons. Then the statistical arguments are meaningless, and you're weeping and begging for someone, anyone to come to your rescue...with a gun...to keep your 14 year old daughter from being gang-raped as you helplessly watch, by some thugs armed with nothing more than knives.

It's a little different argument when it's your ass, or your children's ass on the line, isn't it?

Most of the victims at Virginia Tech (and most other mass shootings) had one wish at the time: that somebody besides the killer had a gun with which to defend everyone.

Oh, and I asked for a "data set" as a rhetorical device intended to point out the fact that "data sets" from dubious or known corrupt sources are worthless.

[Hermit]

what is absolutely true is that every person who was murdered in Australia or the UK died unnecessarily because their government disarmed everyone

...which convincingly explains why the homicide rate ten years before the gun control legislation stood at 2.0 per 100,000 and 1.3 after it.

[Seth]

what is absolutely true is that every person who was murdered in Australia or the UK died unnecessarily because their government disarmed everyone

...which convincingly explains why the homicide rate ten years before the gun control legislation stood at 2.0 per 100,000 and 1.3 after it.

The homicide rate doesn't matter when considering the rights of EACH INDIVIDUAL who is attacked to carry effective self-defense tools. Only THEIR LIVES matter, and anyone who disarms another person in order to achieve some social engineering goal is directly responsible for all deaths and victimizations that might even possibly have been avoided or averted through the lawful possession of such self-defense tools.

Individuals are not statistics. They cannot be reduced to statistics in any moral or ethical fashion. All that matters is that their government disarmed them and they were victimized, and might not have been victimized had they been allowed to lawfully carry defensive arms.

[Clinton Huxley]

Ah, debating 101 - if the stats are against you, move the goalpost.