11/13: Destroying Pakistani firearms

[MaggieL]

The point of the analogy was that you don't equip yourself with a fire extinguisher in the hopes that a fire is going to happen, and I haven't armed myself because I'm itching for a firefight. Please refrain from clairifying my analogies until you understand them. It had nothing to do with bodycount.

And the comment about Jag's age isn't that "being young, he must not be able to engage in debate" but rather "I finally understood why he was unwilling to engage in debate when I found out how young he is".

Dham, you did your best to load your hypothetrical emotionally by brining my daughter into it. But knowing her, I know it's a much more unlikely scenario than even you admit it is--she shares my values about a lot of things.

The place to get *that* shitfaced--so throughly besotted that you don't know where you are--is *not* anywhere outside your home...even in the backyard. It's just plain *stupid* to do that, which is what Darwin Awards are awarded for.

I'm unmoved by "poor guy, he was too drunk to be responsible for himself" arguments. He deliberately incapacitated himself, and then went bouncing around in public. As it was, he randomly picked the worst possible house on the block to try to *break into*, and consequently got killed rather than arrested, or caused some other disaster. Perhaps he *thought* he was trying to get into his own house. But the reason he couldn't even *tell* was *his* doing; I'll shed no tears for him.

His irresponsibility could have killed *someone else*, so he wasn't the only potential victim of his own recklessness. Saying "he didn't deserve to die" is empty--he willingly started a crapshoot where he or any number of the people around him could have gotten hurt. Would he have "deserved" to die if he'd wandered into the path of an oncoming train?

If you're going to deliberately fuck yourself up, especially to that degree, you have a responsibility to protect others from the consequences of your decision just as much as someone who decides to arm himself has a responsibility to ensure that his use of deadly force is appropriate.

I've been intoxicated myself...sometimes *very* intoxicated, and deliberately so. But I was at pains beforehand to ensure that *I* would be safe and would not endanger others just because I was taking a mental holiday. The fact that you make yourself incapable of being responsible does not relieve you of responsibility.

If I'm an "elitist" because I accept responsibility for my own behavior and distain those who don't, then I'll wear that title proudly.