Month: June 2022

The Militia: Well Regulated (Part 2)

“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.”

2nd Amendment, US Constitution

It’s a simple enough statement, especially to have caused such pervasive disagreement in modern society. As with most such arguments, it has polarized past the point of debate, and now all that is left is attack and defense among the unreasoning without any consideration being paid to the actual meaning.

So let’s take a moment to discuss the meaning.

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The Not Fake News Update: 10 June 2022

The Truth Shall Make You Fret

The news and feeds are all full of these hearings, which for some reason couldn’t be held in a timely manner but instead needed to be delayed until… wait, is it Midterm season again? Wow! What a coincidence!

It might surprise you to know that, while you were watching that, other things happened in the world, some of them quite interesting and even important. Here are a few:

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The Militia: What Is It? (Part 1)

“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.”

2nd Amendment, US Constitution

We spend an inordinate amount of our precious time debating this brief statement, often without any understanding of what it actually means, whether in the context of history or of modern law. Fortunately, of all the ills that flesh is heir to, ignorance is among the easiest rectified. Unfortunately, most people afflicted by it are unaware of their misfortune, while even the best informed always have something left to learn. As such, I can only recommend that everyone, whether informed or not, read on — and, if you find something I missed, note it in the comments (include a reputable source, please).

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Free Speech Isn’t

The battle for tomorrow is here, and it’s nothing like the wars of the past. They had clear-cut lines of good and evil, us and them. All we have is a chaos of competing ideas and a populace that, by and large, made up their minds long before any thought got involved. In a sense, this fight is more hopeless than any beach; in another sense, there’s nobody shooting at me, so I can stand up and shout myself hoarse and nothing bad will happen. It’s just that my solutions fix no problems and my words reach no hearts, because even on the off chance someone reads this, nobody’s listening.

But I’ll try anyway.

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Gun Violence: Let’s Solve The Problems

In the preceding article, we discussed different kinds of gun violence, organized by cause. Most gun violence is suicide; only a very few mass shootings ever occur in classrooms. Ideally, none would; ideally, people also wouldn’t ever want to kill themselves, guns notwithstanding.

We don’t live in an ideal world.

That’s no reason not to strive for one.

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