I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I do writing them. This one took a lot of time to research and write.

=========================================
=========================================
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=1758
Article about police protection


Myth: Gun control reduces crimeIs it just me, or does John Stossel look like Geraldo Riviera? Maybe John Stossel DOES look like Geraldo. Who cares?


Incompetence of 9-1-1 dispatchers


O.J. videos are becoming cliché, but this one's actually worth watching. You'll see why.

Columbine. Virginia Tech. That one Amish school in Lancaster, PA. The most recent incident in Illinois. All involving guns. [Some crazy high number] of people die every year from being shot by guns. Why, then, do we have these horrible things, and what is our government doing to help? As usual, nothing!

Actually, we have all kinds of anti-gun laws in the books. Every time another shooting tragedy happens, Congress write up another law restricting gun ownership. It's working, right? If they can't get guns, they can't shoot people with guns, so everyone will be happy.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world where there aren't vicious criminals out to get you. We also don't live in a world where the goverment putting restrictions to deter crime will actually deter criminals from doing nasty things. I'm talking about gun control.

The idea behind gun control goes something like this:
Guns are horrible instruments of terror. The only reason they exist is to kill something. Why should we have these? They should only be given to law enforcement officials so they can protect us from terrorists. The Second Amendment is only a collective right because ordinairy people can't handle guns; only law enforcement officials can use guns for good. Also, kids can steal guns from their parents and shoot people with them.

When Texas first legalized concealed weapons, there was an enormous public outcry. The ignorant masses thought the concealed weapons would drastically increase the number of violent crimes and make the state of Texas an awful place to live in. Around the same time, the District of Columbia banned all handguns from the city residents. The move was praised all over the country because the number of violent crimes would go down.

If you know anything about gun control, you know that's not what happened. The number of violent crimes in Texas actually went down as more people started carrying guns. Now, people could protect themselves if somebody would try to mug them. The muggers were also deterred because they had no idea if the person they were trying to mug had a tiny pistol in the inside pocket of his coat.

Meanwhile, in DC, the number of violent crimes skyrocketed and the people had no way of defending themselves. Fortunately, the gun ban was lifted recently. The mayor gave a speech saying that now that gun ownership restrictions were lifted, there would be even more violent crimes in the nation's capital. Actually, violent crimes go down when you let more ordinairy people carry firearms.

The fact is that guns don't kill people. People kill people. Seriously, people suck. Guns are just a way of satisfying people's sick desires. If they can't get guns to kill you with, they could use something that kills more people: prescription drugs, cigarettes, hamburgers, and even CARS, just to name a few. Does that mean we should ban all automobiles just because 45,000 people die every year from car crashes? Absolutely not!

Apparently we learned nothing from prohibition (which I will write about in the near future; stay tuned). If banning alcohol won't stop people from having hangovers, banning guns won't stop people from getting ahold of them and shooting people dead.

No matter how strict the laws are, there is always some way to get around them, and you can't really stop that. The two boys involved in Columbine obtained guns ILLEGALLY, and their gun dealer sold them the guns ILLEGALLY. What would more restrictions do to stop that? Whether or not shooting people dead is legal, people will still do it. That's just how people are.

That's why you have to protect yourself. I'd love to be in a world with no sadistic bastards out to destroy your life. Unfortunately, we don't. That's why we have to protect ourselves.

What about the police? Aren't they supposed to protect you from these awful criminals? They can, but they don't have to. The police are not constitutionally obligated to protect ordinairy citizens from criminals. Check the books. There are laws saying this to some extent in every state. That's why 9-1-1 dispatchers and cops don't get in trouble if they mess up, no matter how loud the public outcry is. Police exist to protect the government from the mob. They're there to stop anarchy and mobocracy. They don't care about you.

Why does the CIA have secret torture prisons in Uzbekistan? It's to serve the government's own selfish interests. NOT to protect you from terrorist attacks. If the CIA really was trying to protect you from terrorists, it would follow its own advice and not torture anybody. I already explained why torture doesn't work.

And no, Borat's from Kazakhstan. Either way, that was a disgusting movie that I will never watch again.

Similar laws regarding police duties exist all over the world. Why do you think some people never get arrested no matter how many crimes they commit? People are not equal under the law, so of course protection under the law won't be equal, either.

The government doesn't have to protect you if it doesn't want to. However, it will sometimes attempt to stop you from protecting yourself. That's why you have to fight back.

The American Revolution would never have happened if the colonists listened to King George. George III wanted to seize all the guns from the colonial militia. If the Yankees didn't have guns to protect themselves, the Lobsterbacks could harass the ungrateful children of England into submission.

The gun control debate was settled once and for all in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. British troops tried to seize colonial weapons in order to stop future rebellions. Thankfully, they did not succeed. That's why we have Article II of the Bill of Rights:

[
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
]
It means that although the states are allowed to have militia, the right of of the People (capitalized for a good reason) to have weapons can't be taken away. There is another version, but this is the one ratified by the states so it's the amendment.

The Founding Fathers didn't want their elaborate experiment to make the same mistake as its contemporaries, so they allowed an amendment letting people own guns. They knew the government would start acting up again and get too powerful, so they wanted to give people a way to protect themselves.

Again, we don't live in a perfect world with no crime and competent police that are required to protect us. That's why we have to defend ourselves when others won't. I'd like to live in a hypothetical world with no guns, but we don't. That's why more ordinairy people should own guns.

Generally speaking, most people would never intentionally hurt anybody with a gun. That's because even though everyone has sadistic thoughts, most people would never act on them, even when their sanity is questionable.

The best way to protect yourself from people who want to hurt you is by learning self-defense. This self-defense can be anything from verbal to karate and even guns. Learn how to protect yourself. Remember, sharp-shooting lessons won't ever hurt you. However, they will help you in that one moment when your life depends on what you do in the next few seconds.

=====

Concealed weapons are legal to some extent in almost every state with a few exceptions. If you live in New York or New Jersey and you're reading this, tough luck. You can't carry concealed weapons. You can't defend yourself against shooters.

There are some psychological and societal factors that you should consider before you make any judgements about the notorious school shootings. I will write about this in the future.

Yes, kids can get ahold of guns that their parents own. This is as much their parents' fault as when parents don't tell their kids everything about sex until it's too late. Again, I will write about this in the future.

=========================================
=========================================

[4:07 Keith Olbermann talking to Robert Baer]
(video removed by YouTube)

Should we torture our prisoners? I mean, after all, they provide us with valuable information and countless leads on the war on terror. Right?

If you want to see just how effective torture is, think about what you would do if someone tortured you. You would get captured by foreign government officials who are hell bent on getting information from you about something. About what? Who knows? Why are they questioning you on something you don't even know anything about?

You would then get dragged into a prison cell and they would start doing all kinds of things to you. I don't need to explain the types of torture in graphic detail, but I will tell you what waterboarding is because it has been all over the news lately.

[
Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent. In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.

Although waterboarding can be performed in ways that leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death. The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.
]

Eventually, you give in to their demands and tell them whatever they want to hear just so they would leave you alone. If they want you to say you were a mastermind in 9/11, you tell them that. If they want you to confess to killing 50 million Jews in Nazi Germany, yes, you will tell them that, too.

Everyone has a certain threshold of pain. When you reach yours, you'll do anything to make it stop. ANYTHING.

A huge chunk of information we have about 9/11 came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He said all those things while he was being tortured. Even the CIA said this information is unreliable, but this kind of torture-led information is the foundation for our Middle Eastern foreign policy. No wonder we're losing both the nonexistent war on terror AND our credibility among the rest of the world!

The fact is that torture doesn't work. It's that simple.

I'd like to find one good example of excessive torture that gave any significant leads in the war on terror. You can't because there is no good example of excessive torture ever working. None.

But what about police interrogations? Don't they give you valuable information about criminals and their crimes? No, not at all. This is pretty much the same thing, but done on a much smaller scale. If the cops manage to make you upset, you'll want to confess to whatever they accuse you of doing, even if it's not true. You hear it on the news all the time: people confessing to something under interrogation and then recanting it later in court.