meet the vigilantes

the dollar vigilante blog

TDV Week in Review December 16th, 2012

You may as well turn over your guns at your local police station now.

The latest mass murder in Connecticut will surely grease the wheels on the tracks that lead to gun confiscation in the US.

I don't want to conspiratorially paranoid here, but these events are just a little too obvious in their pattern of culmination. That is to say, they are getting worse and more shockingly outrageous each time. College students get shot up on campus...a few soldiers on base...The loss of human life is tragic, but people can generally write off the slaughter of some people more easily than others. College students are, after all, a bunch of hedonistic, privileged know-it-alls who don't have any real problems. And soldiers signed up to get shot at and occasionally hit with flying bullets or shrapnel and blown to bits.

But then you get a bunch of people just like you getting killed doing something you yourself could have been doing...shopping at the mall...or watching the premier of a much-anticipated film. Then it hits home. Then you start getting scared...

And then one of these gun-toting crazies marches into an elementary school. Not a college campus. A school with kids who haven't even gotten halfway to puberty yet. This kind of horror strikes home. It gets the people looking at the tools -- guns -- instead of the perpetrator. It gives the government an excuse to start rounding up the guns...with the consent of the public who are too brainwashed to imagine they have to worry about being unarmed by their government...the same government which used 9/11 as an excuse to grow invade and occupy various countries and to grow the surveillance police state at home. And the same government, by the way, which is anticipating social "unrest" amidst economic collapse.

I have to take a moment to point out here that on the same day the children in Connecticut were getting shot, 22 children in Beijing were getting stabbed by a "mentally deranged" man in the village of Chengpin, Henan province. Granted, none of those children actually died. So this is supposed to make the argument for gun control stronger...because knives aren't "as deadly"... But eight children did die from knife wounds at the hands of 41-year-old Zheng Minsheng in Nanpin, Fujian province in 2010.

In fact, in China with its strict gun controls, there have been multiple knife attacks by adults on young children at school. Click here to see the attacks from 2010-2011 alone.

March 2012, 33-year-old Chen Kangbing injured 16 students and a teacher at Hongfu Primary School in Leizhou, Guangdong.

Point is, guns don't cause violence. It can be argued that the availability of guns in the hands of maniacs makes their violence that much more deadly. But this is a specious argument. The question becomes why do only the maniacs have guns to kill so efficiently and unchecked? Counting on public police protection is about as sensible as being satisfied with public housing. It's the imbalance of power caused by making it essentially illegal for the populace to provide their own immediate protection by making guns so difficult to get legally.

Of course, we could just go the way of China. Ban all guns and force the maniacs to resort to plunging foot-long butcher knives into the soft bodies of their young victims instead of shooting them. Maybe the baying American sheep would find that flavor of murder more digestible. And it would only cost them another one of their freedoms while leaving them unarmed in the biggest, most ambitious police state war machine the world has ever known.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

P.S. Obamacare, the Utah Data Center, domestic drone spying...and coming soon to the police state surrounding you: a ban on all personal firearms. If you can read the writing on the wall and are ready to get out before the border is closed, then click here to let TDV help you prepare for life on the other side of the wall.

Christmas is but nine days away, and sheeple all over the USSA are being herded into malls and box stores filling their stockings with trinkets and iStuff. Looking for the perfect gift for your loved one? Why not a subscription to TDV? Check out our goodies here.

Here’s what we wrote about this week…

MONDAY, December 10

Remembering Lennon

Barry Gordon reflects on a world with, and without, John Lennon on the anniversary of the singer and activist’s death.

“So just after the anniversary of John's death and on what would have been his 72nd birthday, I genuinely mourn his passing still and mourn what he could have accomplished had he lived. But I am so grateful for the likes of the people at TDV who have taken the torch and are being brave and loudly vocal about how dangerous all government and central banks are.”

TUESDAY, December 11

TSA’s Grip on Internal Travel is Tightening

Wendy McElroy on the TSA’s efforts to make domestic travel as much a nightmare as international travel.

“How did Amtrak go from threatening to evict the TSA (an agency within DHS) to joining enthusiastically in the harassment of passengers? What happened in a year-and-a-half?

"Money happened. In 2011, Amtrak received $1.5 billion in federal funds and broke records with 30 million passengers; it still lost money. Amtrak's losses were so huge and persistent that one of Mitt Romney’s campaign promises was to privatize the behemoth. By partnering with national security in October, however, Amtrak guaranteed both funding and survival no matter who won the election.”

WEDNESDAY, December 12

The Human Virus, Governmentitus

James B. from the Freedom Saloon on the infection of governance.

“Can belief in this false god be disproven or is it simply another belief that people unfortunately hold on to with blind faith? Surely past incidents of democide, genocide and war which have caused more unnatural deaths than any disease or natural cause combined would have been enough evidence to humans that belief in the goodness of government should be akin to belief in the tooth fairy. Shouldn’t the past examples of extremely limited government and the wealth and property that have risen from these circumstances been enough to cause humans to evolve and throw off this mental dysfunction?”

THURSDAY, December 13

Fiscal Spliff

TDV Managing Editor Redmond Weissenberger on lightin’ up.

“When the state oversteps its bounds and crosses into areas that are obviously the realm of personal choice, such as what substances one chooses to put into one's own body, even the average person starts to question the laws that have been laid down. And the first questioning of these arbitrary laws begins for many with the personal experience of an outlawed substance.”

FRIDAY, December 14

Feedback Friday – December 14, 2012

Feedback Friday, your chance to ask TDV editors, contributors, and correspondents anything about our articles, our opinions, and the ongoing fight for your freedom. This week: Questions on environmental law, pensions, healthcare for expats, and…reincarnation?

Comments (4)

Sebastian (not verified) - 22 weeks 2 days ago

The cliche that "in a land where guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns" is very true in The Netherlands. Despite strict gun control laws, last year a maniac held a shooting spree at a mall, killing and injuring many. Not to mention the many shootings with "illegal" guns. Gun control laws only pevent law-abiding people from defending themselves. In the case of America, I think the violence is part of a culture that seems obsessed with violence.

MoT (not verified) - 22 weeks 1 day ago

If you'll notice all of that "violence" occurs in places where the possession of said "violent weapons" is verboten. But, of course, "crazies" or those strung out on pharmacological medications, don't pay attention to rules or laws.

mcgoverntm - 22 weeks 2 days ago

I recommend that all TDVers read Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It explains why an anarchist approach to life is superior to others. Taleb is a mathematician who made his fortune trading options and also wrote Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.

Anonymous (not verified) - 22 weeks 2 days ago

I don't suppose that you actually took the time to learn anything more about this shooting than what the Orwellian Ministry of Truth spoonfed you, eh? Have you done ANY investigation of this? So sad, even though you somewhere inside know that basically EVERYthing spewed out by the MSM is lies, spin, and obfuscation. Why don't you start with the fact that the fathers of both the supposed shooters (Colorado and Connecticut) were / ?are due to testify at the upcoming banksters' LIBOR scandal trial. And while you're at it, there's very good evidence also in the Conn. shooting that there were more than one shooter. Two birds with one stone? Kill 2nd Amendment and control witnesses? Sick, sicker, sickest...the darkness is closing in....