Negative Events: Likelihood versus Gravity of Occurrence

Suppose you pack heat. Someone might ask you, "But what is the likelihood that you, given your cautious and circumspect style of life, will ever be in a situation in which you will need to defend your life, or a family member's life, with deadly force?"

The question is legitimate. The answer is as follows. You must weigh the likelihood of the negative event against the gravity of its occurrence.  Although it may be unlikely that you will need to defend yourself or another with a firearm, the consequences of not being able to do so are dire indeed: death of self or other.

The point is that you must not consider merely the likelihood of negative events, but also their gravity should they occur, when determining courses of action.

For a second example, consider wearing a seat belt. I never drive without seat belt fastened. Given my cautious driving habits, the likelihood of  a serious accident on any given day are very low.  But the consequences of going through the windshield are grave, in two senses of that term.

Terrorist and Non-Terrorist Gun-Related Deaths

Top o' the Stack.

Clear thinking provided; vicious abstraction opposed.

Once again, I take on Howlin' Wolff, the Stoned Philosopher.  (In all fairness, his little book on anarchism is excellent, and he is a good Kant scholar.) 

Memo to self: write a separate post on vicious abstraction, an informal fallacy, undiscussed as far as I know. 

Another School Shooting

And so, predictably, the gun-grabbers will howl. Their howling is music to my ears and your signal to buy more guns, ammo, supplies, to pay range fees, training fees, and so on and so forth.  

This is something concrete that you can easily do and it makes a difference.  It puts money in the hands of firearms manufacturers (and their suppliers and subsidiaries) entities which fund the NRA and other lobbying groups who defend 2A against the totalitarian shites of Swamp Land. 

You cannot reason with gun-grabbing fools. They do not inhabit the plane of reason.  We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable  have all the best arguments; they don't have jack. 'Jack' is elliptical for 'jack shit,' an urban quantifier if you will. It means 'anything.'  A curious linguistic bagatelle: 'squat,' 'diddly squat,' 'shit,' 'jack shit,' 'jack' — all have uses as 'urban quantifiers,' a phrase I just now coined.  But you won't find these quantifiers in any logic book, which is yet another reason why you need my blog.

As for the school and other shootings, we of the aforementioned coalition are against them, and recommend that existing laws be enforced, something that won't happen as long as Dementocrats have power.

Start with Hunter Biden.  But see this Reason piece for a contrary view.

Situational Awareness

Another MavPhil public service message:  Don't walk around with your head up your app!

You're a dumbass with a smartphone if you don't understand that it is perhaps the greatest enemy of situational awareness. 

And if you pack heat, bear this in mind: if you have to go to guns, there's probably been a failure of  situational awareness. (Steve Tarani)  Head on a swivel! (Sebastian Gorka)

Memorize and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper's situational awareness color codes!

Don't be a pollyanna.  (And don't confuse her with polyanna, an Anna with multiple personality disorder.)

Gunfire Tonight!

One of the exciting things about living out here in the Arizona Territory is that all too many local hombres love to greet the the New Year with a hail of gunfire aimed heavenward. It adds a nice Middle Eastern touch to the Copper State.

Part of the problem is the sad state of science education in these United States. There are people who do not understand that a falling projectile poses a threat. (I have actually met such people.) They understand that they cannot catch with their bare hands a round fired at them; but they don’t understand that that same round, falling on a human head from a sufficient height, will kill the head’s unlucky possessor.

Let’s see if we can understand the physics. If I jump from a chair to the floor, no problem. Same if I jump from a table to the floor. But I shrink back from neighbor Bob’s suggestion that I jump from my roof to the ground. "Just kick away the ladder, like Wittgenstein, and jump down." Nosiree Bob! But why should it be any different? The mass of my body remains invariant across the three scenarios. And the gravitational field remains the same. But the longer I remain falling in that field, the faster I move. A body falling in the earth’s gravitational field falls at the rate of 32 feet per second PER SECOND. Thus the body ACCELERATES. The body’s velocity is ever increasing. Now the momentum of a moving object — which is roughly a measure of the amount of effort it would take to stop it from moving — is the product of its velocity and its mass. So a small mass like a bullet, left falling for a long enough time, will attain a high velocity and thus a high momentum, and so do a lot of damage to anything it comes in contact with, a human skull for example.

Buk on New Year's Eve

Gun Semantics

Under 14 minutes, by Massad Ayoob, one of the best. Words mean things, especially in a court of law. Precise, penetrating, and practical. As civil society collapses around us, and more and more of us must look to our own physical defense, you must also know how to avoid verbal entrapment by the prosecutorial shysters of the Left. 'Shyster,' as you know, is from the German sheissen, to shit. (I shit kid you not.)

‘Islamophobia’ and ‘Hoplophobia’

A very polite Substack chiding of the stupid and often vicious use of these terms. My entry shows how to make a point rationally and stylishly without any use of invective and only the slightest trace of sarcasm. You have to cultivate the ability to write in a civil and respectful way. But you must also know how to pummel and deride scum like the present POTUS and his sorry entourage who, in their willful self-enstupidation, mindlessly repeat phrases they have heard with nary a concern for what they mean or ought to mean.

Different strokes for different folks. Sweet reason for some; the hard fist of unreason for others. The 'hard fist' comes in two flavors, one verbal, the other meta-verbal. 

Israel’s Draconian Gun Laws

This surprised me.

Why would Jews, who are smart, be so stupid about firearms? The Jews in Israel are surrounded by people who do not hide the fact that they intend to exterminate them and who believe that they are required to do so by their benighted religion. How could anyone fail to grasp that the right to life, which is an individual, not a group, right entails the individual's right to self-defense and therewith the right to acquire appropriate means thereto?  How could anyone fail to grasp that no government could possibly protect every citizen needing protection from lethal threats, especially the citizens of a state beleaguered by ruthless enemies on all sides?  Read on for some insight into the roots of this madness.

Continue reading “Israel’s Draconian Gun Laws”

Hannity Shreds RFK, Jr.

Here:

Kennedy was already stammering when Hannity asked, “Do you still believe the NRA is a terror group?”

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Kennedy tried to deflect by saying he supports the Second Amendment and the Constitution.

But Hannity actually drilled down. “I didn’t ask you if you support the Second Amendment. … In 2018, you said Parkland students are right, the NRA is a terror group.”

Kennedy was left feebly denying any recollection of saying that, and if he did, he didn’t mean it.

Fortunately, X had a better memory than RFK Jr.

Hannity also brought up Kennedy’s support for leftist radicals.

When I found out that Kennedy had called the NRA a terror group my opinion of him went to zero. And yet I would fully support RFK Jr. if I could be sure that his third-party candidacy would siphon votes from Biden and help Trump win. 

I have some very nice things to say about RFK Jr. and his latest book here.