Arizona revives gun debate. by Rod Rojas

The unfortunate, recent shooting in Arizona in which Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others were attacked has revived the debate regarding gun laws, especially because Arizona has relatively lax gun laws.

It is widely speculated on the media that Jared Loughner –the alleged gunman- may have some sort of mental imbalance, so there have been calls for further screening regulation to limit the ability of mental patients to purchase guns. It must be noted that mental illness only rarely translates into criminal violence.

One of the reasons why he is being deemed mentally unstable is because of his anti-government views, and his support for the gold standard. By this definition the entire libertarian community should be moved to a mental institution.

According to Rich Daly of Psychiatric News, the mentally ill only perpetrate between 3 and 5 percent of all gun related violence. It seems that a statistical link with the brand of shoes that the killer used might yield more conclusive results.

Mental health care is no different to any other sort of health care; it affects many people around us. Most of them lead relatively normal lives while coping with their imbalance in the same way that others cope with chronic fatigue or diabetes. Because of the huge stigma attached to mental illness, privacy is vital to the mental patient’s ability to function in society. The publication of mental records through a consolidated database to allow gun dealers to perform background checks would be a huge blow to this overwhelmingly peaceful -and sometimes fragile- segment of our population.

In Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) is already talking about a federal ban on high capacity magazines, like the one allegedly used by Loughner.

Considering the repeated and unmitigated failure of every single prohibitionist policy, why would anyone still advocate banning anything?

Banning a good or service only creates a black market for it. And along with the criminalization comes the violence related to the illegal trafficking. In other words, not only do the goods or services not leave the market, but we create new branches of crime, we incur huge costs in connection to the enforcement of the laws, and we see a rise in the price of the goods and services in question.

Sometimes a ban can even make the good more readily available than if it were legally obtainable. Take the case of illegal drugs for example. It is much easier for a teen to get hold of marijuana than beer.

Illegality also imparts the good or service with a certain appeal. The 1920’s prohibition of alcohol in the USA gave glamour to the underground bars. Likewise today, we see how drug dealing has been idealized in parts of the hip-hop culture.

We should also remember that producing, buying, selling or owning a weapon does not in any way harm anybody. The initiation of violence against others or their property is what needs to be punished, and this can be done with or without guns. Victimless, voluntary exchanges are not crimes.

I suppose Congresswoman McCarthy spends time in Washington DC, where some of the most draconian gun laws have been in effect since 1976. She should be familiar with the high crime rate and with the fact that violent criminals still carry guns in the District of Columbia. Restrictive gun laws disarm law abiding citizens, not criminals.

We may contrast the District of Columbia with Switzerland, which has one of the highest private gun ownership rates in the world, and where gun crime rates are statistically insignificant. That little country has no professional army, so Swiss males between the ages of 18 and 42 are required by law to keep a fully automatic assault rifle at home. While conscription should not be advocated, we should note that the Swiss don’t go around shooting each other, just like we don’t go around stabbing each other to death in spite of the fact that we all have big, sharp, lethal knives in our kitchens.

While we feel for the friends and families of the victims, and bans appear to be the right thing to do, we need to know that they do not produce the desired effects. There was once a world without guns and both cruelty and crime were definitely present.

Do not let politicians capitalize on your emotions. Oppose the passing of legislation that restricts your freedom, endangers your privacy and causes problems while solving none.

Rod Rojas is a holder of the Canadian Securities Course designation and performs as a financial adviser in personal, corporate, and public-policy matters. Read his articles at Mises.org.  Send him mail.

Antimatter from thunderstorms

This is very strange and out-of-this-world discovery! This posting from a NASA website claims that the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected evidence of antimatter particles inside thunderstorms.
The Fermi Telescope was designed to look out into the universe, but was able to detect terrestrial gamma-ray flashes.

BLAME

The recent shooting in Arizona has triggered the predictable blame game played out by the various and sundry media as well as bloggers. It's the guns, Arizona is too lax on guns, thats the cause. Or it's the acrimonious political atmosphere in the US, or its Sarah Palin's unfortunate poster with the sniperscope crosshairs on various congressional districts.
It is virtually impossible to comprehend that a 22-year-old man would pop-off six people in a parking lot as casually as you or I, tossing flat stones into a pond. But thats what happened. He planned it, he did it, and it might have been even worse.
People need reasons, people need to believe there is purpose to the world and the things that happen in it, so those in charge of the media offer up reasons. They march in the experts who have studied these situations (can you believe that!), and each expert gives a plausible cause for the incident because hindsight is 20/20, and it happened so it MUST have had a reason.
Sarah Palin like rifles, long guns with crosshairs, that poster is what I would expect, but it is not her fault.
When is the political atmosphere in America NOT acrimonious? That is not a cause.
Guns, well, thats like blaming the airliners for crashing into the Twin-Towers on 9/11, it's not guns that are at fault. It's the guy, the 22-year-old nut job and there is no reason in the world of sane people to explain it.
I'm already tired of hearing the parade of personalities invoking the deity and trying to give a reason for this story, a purpose for the six lives wasted, the twelve wounded, and for the suffering of the survivors. There is no deity, there is no purpose, and there is no getting over it if you were there.

If you think my commentary is bleak, have a look at this on the same topic.  

Rattling the cage of The Barefoot Bum 2

I was going to call this post Communist Bum, but I suspect the Barefoot Bum would have called that title "egregiously stupid," his favourite phrase when he references me, Libertarians, Randians (Objectivists), and anyone else who disagrees with him in general. I don't like calling anyone a communist (because in the USA that might get you shot), I prefer to use the word statist (but Statist Bum does not demonstrate the same level of contempt that I hold). Oh wait, Mr. Bum doesn't think the term 'statist' is "particularly well-defined." Let me help.
In my usage, statist comes from the word "statism" which means the theory or practice of concentrating economic and political power in the state, usually resulting in a weak position for the individual or community with respect to government. A statist is one who practices statism.  As far as I'm concerned there is very little difference in practice between communists, fascists, NAZI's, socialists (called New Democrats in Canada), Liberals (in Canada), Conservatives (everywhere), Democrats, Republicans, Greens and on and on. They are ALL statists according to that definition and my usage, and they differ only in degree of application. However, there is a very big difference between Libertarians and Conservatives/Republicans. Libertarians want limits on the size and scope of government, Conservatives/Republicans say that they do but in practice it never works out that way. In those so-called right-wing (Conservative/Republican) governments the state always accumulates more power, more control, and more funding at the expense of individuals and communities. That is what has happened in the US and Canada.

Mr. Bum has dissected my previous commentaries line-by-line and he did it again in a recent post after I responded to his initial attack. I don't read Mr. Bum's postings as a rule, it was only by accident that I found his attack on my posting. What I do know is is that Mr. Bum hates Libertarians. Strangely Mr. Bum has something in common with Ayn Rand, my supposed Prophet, she hated Libertarians too. Go figure.

I first read Rand's work as a boy in the late 1960's and early '70's and she obviously had a profound affect on me probably because my thinking at the time was similar to hers. Mr. Bum refers my "dreary Libertarian dogma" blaming Rand.  Of course his communist views are strictly his own, sprung from his fertile brow and certainly not dogmatic. I'm full of dogma and propaganda because I'm libertarian, he is just a communist, no dogma, no propaganda just lots of evidence and skepticism. Right Mr. Bum?

In his most recent dissection of my blog he avoids my comment "I too would be frustrated if my dream-Marxist world had collapsed to the point where just Cuba and North Korea are all that is left of the great revolution of the proletariat. The former communist world has taken on a decidedly capitalistic appearance, though it is still coercive by nature; they have moved closer to us in the West and unfortunately we have moved closer to them in many ways." He avoids it because its true, though he actually posts an apology for Communism before he dissects my blog. Nice touch. In it he says: "I self-identify as a communist. I could just as easily self-identify as a socialist. I chose "communist" for a couple of reasons. Both terms have some unfortunate connotations. Communism, of course, carries the baggage of the errors and excesses of the Soviet Union and China." So, Mr. Bum wants to distance himself from the "unfortunate connotations" of those places where communism began and had its greatest effect on humanity. He also feels free to distance himself from all the advocates of communism (Marx, Lenin, Mao etc.). Damn those unfortunate connotations! I guess he means the millions and millions murdered (possibly 110 million people!) by Stalin and Mao and others. Yes, that is unfortunate. But lets not dwell on reality. Mr. Bum shares with us his ethics: "My fundamental ethical philosophy is gob simple: I want as many people as possible to be as happy as possible, however each person construes "happiness"; I want as few people as possible to suffer as little as possible, however each person construes "suffering". I see the interesting part of politics and economics to be about how to bring about universal happiness. If I thought capitalism were the best way to bring about universal happiness, I would be a capitalist; I do not, therefore I searched for an alternative and settled — at least at present — on communism." Ugh, that sounds like the beauty contest contestant that wants "world peace," he just wants everyone to be happy, and not suffer, and that will happen in his communist lala land, but not like before, that was bad. Mr. Bum goes on to dismiss the communist (and also statist) idea of a planned economy as "unsound" and prefers "the social ownership of capital, the means of production," whatever the hell that means, I have no idea and I'm sure he could not explain it either.


I do agree with one thing that he says: "I consider economics and politics to be fundamentally scientific disciplines; I do not believe they areas merely of competing dogmas."  I agree, economics at least, is a science. Like any science, attempts should made to describe it with theories. Theories are formed by testing hypotheses, when a hypothesis corresponds with reality (i.e. is true) it is accepted. Hypotheses become theories when they describe reality and can be used to make predictions with outcomes that correspond to the real world if they work. If communist theory claims that the means of production should be owned by the proletariat for the good of everyone, fine, show me an example where this has worked or even partially worked now or in the past. Is it in Cuba, North Korea, the former Soviet Union, any of the Eastern Block satellites of the USSR, Red China, is it anywhere, anywhere but in the Communist Manifesto? Every time communism has been attempted anywhere it has led to "errors and excesses" and "unfortunate connotations" as Mr. Bum so blandly puts it. Every time! That is quite a record of rotten success, quite a record of UNhappiness, Mr. Bum!

So lets summarize, communism hasn't worked, doesn't work, and millions and millions have died, but Mr. Bum concludes: "so I'm a communist." Fine, be happy.

However, I'm a libertarian, I support freedom and I do not support coercion, and communism requires coercion and removes freedom, always. My choice of economics is the Austrian School or Theory. What is the Austrian Economics? Just click on that for a lengthy history and explanation. In essence it is a laissez-faire approach to economics. Where it has been tried, it has been wildly successful. Witness the United States, Canada or any country or territory that remotely resembles laissez-faire Austrian Economics. Again it is a matter of degree, but if you check out this interactive map of Economic Freedom and correlate it to the wealth, life expectancy, yes happiness, of individuals in those countries found in this document, then you might agree with me. If you live in Canada or the United States you are still free to choose. You are also free to agree with the Barefoot Bum and the dreck that he spews.