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114

L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 114, March 26, 2001
March Militia Madness

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: TLE #113
Date: Sunday, March 18, 2001 3:07 PM

<<Private Investigators do most of "that" now. All major coorporations have a security department that investigates losses, interviews witnesses, gathers evidence, and hunts for the perpetrator. It is only a small step for PI's to move to the other elements you describe. >>

But do private detectives have the right to serve search warrants on people in their homes?

<<Forensice investigation is a science. Government holds no special monopoly on it. Private citizens are, under our constitution, already able to arrest for felonies. >>

But how can they back up their arrests? Can they legally handcuff people? Can they point a gun at their arrestees?

<<And, under a truly free society, there would be a lot less rape, murder and robbery, as people would truly be able to defend themselves. >>

Sure, if everyone could carry a concealed handgun we'd see crime plummet, but that's different from having a bunch of competing private agencies do police work.

-- Susan

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: TLE #113
Date: Sunday, March 18, 2001 3:09 PM

<<Do you think that private organizations can't investigate crimes? If so, what is your evidence? >>

Can private organizations serve search warrants? Can they arrest people and march them into an interrogation room at gunpoint? Can they legally detain and question them?

-- Susan

From: "Eric Oppen" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Vin's latest
Date: Sunday, March 18, 2001 7:17 PM

While I always admire and enjoy the estimable Vin Suprynowicz, his latest offering in Issue #113 shows, at least in my view, that he has fallen into the same trap that the anti-gunners have.

When he decries vaccination of children, he says that out of 3.6 million children vaccinated in a year, 22 to 36 will suffer permanent brain damage as a result. While these injuries are undoubtedly tragic, they are far down in statistical noise, and if similar figures were quoted about guns, say, that out of whatever many million guns there are in the US, fewer than a hundred will be used to shoot a child, he would rightfully be the first to hoot in derision. 22 to 36 chances of injury out of 3.6 million are odds that almost anybody would find highly favorable to non-injury.

I have, in general, very little sympathy for faith-healers of any stripe, and quite enjoyed an anecdote in The American Atheist magazine some years ago, where a woman who'd grown up in the Christian Science church told about how, at church one day, one of the elderly ladies who made up most of the congregation said that she had witnessed a motorcycle accident, and, trotting up to the victim as he lay there groaning and bleeding, told him that there was no pain and that his injuries were all in his mind. The story ended with the narrator saying that the old lady hadn't reported what answer she got, "but I think she may have learned a few new words that day."

-- Eric Oppen

From: "Vin Suprynowicz" <[email protected]>
To: "The Libertarian Enterprise" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Fw: Vin's latest
Date: Monday, March 19, 2001 4:18 PM

Hi, John --

If anyone were proposing that owning a gun and leaving it where it can be reached by your small child be made MANDATORY, that we would refuse to let your child attend government schools -- even threaten to take the children out of your home and place them in foster care UNLESS YOU OBEYED OUR NEW MANDATE TO KEEP GUNS LYING AROUND LOOSE IN YOUR HOME WHETHER YOU LIKED IT OR NOT -- then this comparison might be relevant.

No one is proposing that pertussis vaccinations be banned (well, not yet) ... the way gun-grabbers want guns banned. My stated objection was only to the fact that these vaccinations (known by the government to cause death and permanent brain damage in a statistically predictable number of innocent children -- and of highly dubious usefulness if "preventing" a disease now easily treatable with standard antibiotics, anyway) are MANDATORY.

Not only that, federal legislation -- under ther guise of settiong up a "fund" to "compensate" victims ... sharply limits the rights of victims to sue vaccine manufacturers for REAL, PROVABLE HARM!

Even if these shots caused NO HARM AT ALL, it would be evil to support a policy which forces parents to get their kids shot up with this stuff, no matter how "frivolous" we might think their objections. (Just for the record, I don't think concerns that kids' immune systems may actually be compromised by this ever-expanding plethora of vaccinations now "required" -- each of more dubious value than the last -- are necessarily frivolous, at all.) Are such decisions the purview of parents, or are these children actually THE PROPERTY OF THE STATE?!

But given that we (and they) KNOW there's a real risk of death or permanent brain damage ... and given the way medical professionals blackmail parents into "getting all their shots," making a mockery of the assertion that these parents are giving any real "informed consent" after being given three seconds to supposedly "read" 6,000 words of fine print wadded up and wrapped around the bottle of vaccine, I'm stunned that any thinking person would support this GOVERNMENT MANDATE.

I have spoken to the ACTUAL MOMS whose children shrieked in pain late into the night -- not just crying, but a desperate, forced shrieking that I'm told you have to hear to believe -- as their brains swelled after receiving these shots. One kid, who had already begun to walk and talk, reverted and didn't walk and talk again for more than a year. Can this writer even IMAGINE what it felt like for this woman to ask "What's wrong? What's wrong with my child?!" and to have these asshole medicos DENY it could possibly have been the shots ... to continue to GIVE the followup shots, duplicating the same results over and over -- even after seeing this swelling of the brain?

Yes, it caused permanent brain damage. And by the time this poor woman finally educated herself and gathered evidence that it WAS the pertussis vaccinations, what do you suppose they told her?

"Sorry, there's a three-year time limit for coming forward with a claim" under the federal pertussis vaccination compensation program (capped at less than $100,000 per victim by sponsor TED KENNEDY, this poor woman's own senator.)

Did this guy really write: "22 to 36 chances of injury out of 3.6 million are odds that almost anybody would find highly favorable to non-injury"?

Which one of us has gone bonkers, here? If I place a rattlesnake in a sleeping baby's crib for 30 seconds, I'll admit I have no idea what the chances are the snake will bite the sleeping baby. Probably less than we'd think -- the snake will mainly want to escape, of course, and human babies aren't normally considered edible prey. But let's say it could be demonstrated that the chances are "1 in a million." Could we therefore conclude that it would be fine for the government to MANDATE that a rattlesnake be placed in every baby's crib for 30 seconds -- that they can and should seize and remove the children of any parent who resists this new mandate, placing all that mom's children in foster care -- since the 20 or 30 kids who would die every year would be "far down at the level of statistical noise," and "22 to 36 chances of injury out of 3.6 million are odds that almost anybody would find highly favorable to non-injury"?

Twenty-two dead or permanently brain-damaged infants are "highly favorable" (I assume he means "preferable") to no pertussis shots,and no one getting injured at all?

Remember, during the pertussis outbreak in Cincinatti a few years back, the incidence of the disease among those CHILDREN who had been VACCINATED AGAINST IT was HIGHER than among those who had NOT.

-- Vin

From: "Peter Arroyo" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: School Shootings
Date: Monday, March 19, 2001 12:50 AM

Sir;

I wondered why all of the school shootings in the news the past few years seemed to be in schools located in the "better neighborhoods". I never heard of any shootings in inner city schools--supposed hotbeds of mayhem and violence. Then I realized that the reason is exactly what the defenders of the Second Amendment claim.

Criminals avoid targets that may fight back.

If some potential shooter in an inner city school pulled a gun and threatened to shoot anyone, how many guns would be drawn by members of rival groups to prevent the shooting? The original shooter would not do such a thing because he or she would only expect their own death before any "statement" could be made.

An armed society is a safe society.

P J

From: "Ben and Sylvia Olson" <[email protected]>
To: "John Taylor" <[email protected]>
Subject: Hornberger
Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 5:06 PM

Recently overheard at the Iowa LP Convention: "In the tradition of the Randsberger Pivot and the Nolan Chart, a new verb: Hornberger 'To sling shit - true or not - until some of it sticks.'"

Ben and Sylvia Olson

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