I suppose an explanation of the title is the simplest way to start this off. The quote is a paraphrase from a slightly less famous Douglas Adams book called Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. For those of you who have not yet read it, I strongly suggeset you do so.
I am always amazed at the number of things that can be bought and sold over the internet. The other day I did a google search for tranquilizer guns and found a couple sites where I, a random guy from Who Knows Where could buy a trank gun and accompanying disposable hypodermic darts. Although there is an age restriction - no buyers under eighteen- how many eighteen-year-olds do you know who could be trusted not to do something stupid and/or irresponsible with a weapon like that? I know a couple, but a lot of the people that age I know (and older too) shouldn't be trusted with a cap gun, let alone the capability to inject someone with any given liquid from a distance.
posted by tracker | 1:48 PM
1 Comments:
would you involve the government then? Because, you know, that if anyone can have one, someone will. And if that someone is a member of the government, then that guy is getting special treatment. Be he cop, or animal control or whomever, he is fundamentally just some guy. Some guy who preserves for himself the right to have one, and denies me the same right.
We have no way of knowing which adults will use such an item wisely, and which won't. But we do know that the side of good is upon the side of preserving rights. Criminals will exist. We deal with them as such when they hurt others - when they violate the rights of others. And we don't, if we are smart, attempt to prevent risk by infringing on the rights of others ourselves.
That way lies woe. It is a route paved in fool's gold - the perception of safety, the elevation of some above others in the name of caution, the debasement of all beneath authoritarian lies.
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