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 Shamash ... |
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oh chaz this thread is about rights granted by government, or at least one government, and one right, and a right that had to come in the form of an amendment, and not about rights we grant ourselves. you are certainly right -- rather, you certainly have the right to believe as you will -- am not here to change what you believe, or practice. but I will say this: you are wrong, or at least incorrect, when you say to me: <<"you enacted 'rough justice' on your own terms ... an illegal act">> A number of times I have taken rough justice into my own hands -- in ways that were not unlawful, or illegal, but effective, and powerful, and filled with a celebratory, joyful sense of doing -- or of catalyzing -- what was just, seeing that an evil-doer got what was coming to him. No, my friend, as many laws as there are, you do not have to break the law to exact private justice, to receive the sense of justice we all believe is part of Life, though it may not be part of a legal system that we can count on to serve us. You just have to be creative. |
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Shamash ... |
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no, chaz. . . , But let's start with this. Relations between people can be with a stranger, or with someone you know. And even an interaction with a stranger may become an interaction with someone you grow to know. So let's start with a relationship between people who know each other. In that relationship (which by the way can also characterize a relationship between countries, the way historically the pattern of interaction between England and Russia followed the pattern of interaction between Queen Elizabeth I and Ivan the Terrible, in terms of what they wanted from each other, and what they expected from each other, and how one of them disappointed the wishful expectations of the other). And a dyad can be like that, although hopefully the relationship between the two is not a means to an end, but the end itself. Like friendship. Anyway, in a relationship between people who know each other, that relationship generates expectations of behavior. The way a relationship between say a husband and wife generates expectations of behavior, and loyalty, and responsiveness, and consideration, even, yes, loving. Or the way a relationship between two friends generates expectations of trust and loyalty and fairness, and even standing up for the other, and for the values they share. I simply think that the betrayal of those implicit pledges, where that betrayal puts one of them into the role of victim -- say two acquaintances are out together, and one of them turns on the other, takes out a handgun and robs him -- I think that behavior should have consequences. This goes beyond what is written in lawbooks, and its concern with explicit contracts as a formal way of governing behavior. And I don't think any perpetrator ever signed a contract before he became a sexual pervert that he would not target children in the community where he or she lives -- yet any community expects a modicum of civilized behavior from each of us -- and when there is a need to protect the victims, and to punish or banish the killer, the rapist, the assailant, the predator -- and to restore their antefelonious (if not Edenic) world to the victims -- there is a social law that predates the legal code and demands justice be done. |
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Shamash ... |
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Sorry for responding to a an old post... This is the forth post to this thread: Itchy: <Here in the UK we have tight gun laws, handguns are outright banned and in my lifetime of 25 years I can remember two incidents of a maniac on a gun rampage (The Dunblane massacre in 1996 at a primary school, which was before the handgun ban, and one late last year). The US it seems to have many more of these types of incidents than other countries. I'm not simply talking about other countries with tighter gun laws either, there are examples of countries with more guns per person and much lower gun crime rates (see Canada and I think Switzerland for examples). I would be intrigued as to why this is, what is the reason behind your outrageous gun murder rate? Violent culture? Loose gun control? Fear? Wealth disparity? It must be something, but no one seems to ever want to get to the bottom of it.> -------------------------------- This is an older source..... but Don B Kates Jr. is the most intelligent man I have ever met when it comes to the issue of gun control. "Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset has suggested that cultural factors cause disturbed Americans to strike out against others whereas disturbed Europeans turn their violence on themselves. This difference helps explain the details (p.37)of American and European statistics set out in the International Intentional Homicide Table on page 42 of this study INTERNATIONAL INTENTIONAL HOMICIDE TABLE Note: Table is based on figures from two different sources (as further specified below). Insofar as they are given therein, all figures are from the 1983-86 averages in Killias' Tables 1 & 2.* If Killias does not give figures, those numbers are from the latest year listed for the country in United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1985 (published 1987). Figures from Killias are in boldface; all other figures are in ordinary type. Country Suicide Homicide Total RUMANIA 66.20 n.a. 66.20 (1984) HUNGARY 45.90 n.a. 45.90 (1983) DENMARK 28.70 0.70 29.40 (1984) AUSTRIA 26.90 1.50 28.40 (1984) FINLAND 24.40 (1983) 2.86 27.20 FRANCE 21.80 (1983) 4.36 26.16 SWITZERLAND 24.45 1.13 25.58 BELGIUM 23.15 1.85 25.00 W. GERMANY 20.37 1.48 21.85 JAPAN 20.30 0.90 21.20 UNITED STATES 12.20 (1982) 7.59 19.79 CANADA 13.94 2.60 16.54 NORWAY 14.50 (1984) 1.16 15.66 N. IRELAND (Homicide rate may not include "political" homicides) 9.00 6.00 15.00 AUSTRALIA 11.58 1.95 13.53 NEW ZEALAND 9.70 1.60 11.30 ENGLAND/WALES (Homicide rate does not include "political" homicides) 8.61 0.67 9.28 www.guncite.com |
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