{"id":568,"date":"2013-01-04T10:29:38","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T17:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/?p=568"},"modified":"2019-06-21T13:44:17","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T20:44:17","slug":"lethal-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/?p=568","title":{"rendered":"Lethal Alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sam Harris<\/a> discusses firearms as a viable defensive choice in 21st century America in his post on Jan 3 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some background: I too enjoy shooting sports and have been trained and licensed in the legal use of handguns for self defense. That said, I believe Sam Harris overreaches in his promotion of lethal force as deterrence to violence, in his most recent writing. Still, his is a more honest discussion than many editorials on either side of the issue, following the various national calamities of gun play, and deserves a read.<\/p>\n

Mr. Harris’ comments reflect his experience with death threats precipitated by his controversial publications. Sam cannot be blamed for arming-up in response to bad intentions pointed his way — yet projecting a similar need among others, who live a less notorious life-style, strikes me as excessive.<\/p>\n

I particularly question his dismissal of efforts to ban high capacity magazines. Equating multiple lo-cap magazines as equal in force to hi-cap single fill clips, begs the question. He seems to allow unbalanced killers the calm to dexterously swap cartridge clips — while suffering within a blinding craze of destruction. And speaking for the well-armed citizen, what would be a thoughtful situation demanding a hi-capacity response? A wild Indian raid? Perhaps a Zombie attack? Where outside of actual warfare, does massive fire power following a pull of a trigger, offer other than liability to innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n

While Sam offers statistics which purport a relative low-risk from death-by-lunatic, he oddly follows this conclusion with an argument in favor of the introduction of weapons in schools as a deterrence from attacks by madmen. Before we implement such defensive protocol, perhaps we could talk to a few seasoned teachers, who confront teenage angst daily. Let’s see if they favor introducing lethal alternatives into the soup of childhood hormones. Not likely, and certainly not conducive to a calm learning environment.<\/p>\n

I begin to wonder whether controversy is the goal rather than the byproduct of Sam Harris’ brilliant essays.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Sam Harris discusses firearms as a viable defensive choice in 21st century America in his post on Jan 3 2013. Some background: I too enjoy shooting sports and have been trained and licensed in the legal use of handguns for self defense. That said, I believe Sam Harris overreaches in his promotion of lethal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28,55,106],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-cultural-anxiety","tag-fear-mongering","tag-gun-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesstoprofess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}