Peter Bagge on the right to own a bazooka

Reason magazine's August/September double issue is available online:

Read Peter Bagge's cover story/cartoon on gun control; features on Robert Heinlein, the regulation of lifesaving drugs, and post-Kelo legislation; as well as Nick Gillespie's Editor's Note, letters to the editor, citings, and much, much more!

Link

• [Burz]

  Well, one can always just read Xeni and Cory’s blogs separately now that Boingboing is hawking arch Libertarian ideology.

  One last note to you, Mark: The individual-centered libertarian rhetoric has all been repurposed for advancing the freedoms of corporation-as-person. The past 30 years have come down to all individual responsibility and vanishing individual freedom, where the little guy has no financial security and is endlessly being “secured” against terrorists and other minuscule threats. The corrosive “government is evil” mantra has played right into the hands of aristocrats and their public servants, for a people who expect an evil government are the most likely to tolerate one.

• [Personman]

  The article doesn’t load for me. Other articles do, and the rest of the page does, but the actual article (picture?) just isn’t there. There’s the title, the ‘discuss this story’ link, and then the footer material…

• [Anonymous]

  Bagge was great in his Neat Stuff and early Hate days, but sucks as a polemicist. When he pulls out the old canard of Sweden’s high suicide rate – an urban myth debunked many times during the last three or so decades – you know he’s not only too lazy to check his facts, but too lazy to come up with any actual arguments other than “freedom = access to weapons for all”. I’m sure it’s somewhat comforting to have such a simplistic view of life – but it doesn’t exactly make you much of a thinker.

• [Ian Holmes]

  Yep, it’s a deeply ironic comment on the emptiness of the libertarian position.

• [Anonymous]

  #2,

  Is the Soviet Union a deeply ironic comment on the essence of the modern liberal position?

• [brundlefly]

  Not loading for me, either.

• [BSUWG]

  I’m still a little pissed that the second amendment allows gun owership, but doesn’t provide for Lawn Jart ownership.

  http://bsuwg.blogspot.com/2007/03/imho-installment-15-somethings-wrong.html

• [Habla Mierda]

  I wrote something similar about a month ago on why I support the private ownership of nuclear weapons.

• [jordanlund]

  Meh. Doesn’t load in either I.E. or Firefox so I’m just going to use a boilerplate gun control opinion.

  The founding fathers wrote the second amendment at a time when military grade weapons were muzzle-loaded single shot affairs that took 15 seconds (at best) to re-load after firing.

  They couldn’t comprehend two things:

  1) Cheap pistols with 15 to 18 round capacities.

  2) Governments with chemical and biological weapons.

  The idea that a free people need small arms to defend themselves against a government with chemical and biological weapons along with a willingness to use them (2001 anthrax attacks anyone?) is patently ridiculous.

  Now I’ll grant you, small arms are better than nothing, but in the face of an armed rebellion a government is going to pull out all the stops and an armed civilian population stands no chance.

  That being said, I’m still going to the gun show tomorrow.

• [PopeRatzo]

  Reason magazine has deteriorated into a pro-corporate mess. Once, it actually held some libertarian positions, but has become little more than a pro-Republican, pro-big business rag, I’m afraid.

  As a subscriber to Reason, I’ve watched it’s decline with some sadness.

• [phasor3000]

  Now I’ll grant you, small arms are better than nothing, but in the face of an armed rebellion a government is going to pull out all the stops and an armed civilian population stands no chance.

  You mean like in Iraq?

• [Ian Holmes]

  #3,

  Probably… and Putin’s Russia is a D.I.C. on free-market capitalism. Not sure what this has to do with the article…

• [Anonymous]

  I can’t get it to load either, but there is a good take on the issue by Bob the Angry Flower.

• [Anonymous]

  Fer duck huntin’.