(But it’s not really about guns, laws, math or science—it’s all about tyrannical power.) If you don’t have time to read my lengthy essay, just watch this. (You might decide to come back read the whole thing afterward—or even to share it.)
Gun control laws not working is a big claim. While I already felt qualified to make that claim, and the linked video does a superb job on its own; I want to approve and amplify its message based on who I am and what I’m seeing. First I’ll share a lot about me to establish my own credibility (sorry that some of it is boastful—that’s not something I like doing). Next I’ll talk about the historical, philosophical, scientific and global context in which we presently find ourselves (and you’ll see how and why this issue is so important). That makes this whole essay essentially a deep, (hopefully entertaining and informative) intro to someone else’s amazing video: the stupidly long introductory speech that says, HEY, LISTEN TO THIS AND BELIEVE IT!” If you decide to bail out of my little intro novella, be sure to leave yourself 20 minutes to actually watch ReasonTV’s video!
I earned my BA in psychology. I truly loved the quantitative, empirical aspects of the program like statistics and especially the lighter parts of experimental psychology. But I found the vast quantity of subjective content disturbingly unscientific. Some immoral experiments in social psychology also totally crossed the line. These raised huge ethical and methodological concerns for me. Many aspects of the competing psychological theories border on literary fiction; they’re, at best, no more than interesting philosophical conjectures. This situation struck me as completely unsuitable to the care and treatment of real people with real problems. It totally destroyed my confidence in psychology and most of the so called “social sciences.” I believe these poorly defined fields are even less suited to the development of sound social, economic, administrative and law enforcement policy than to helping patients due to their massive vulnerabilities to contradictory interpretations, misuse by peers with radical agendas and ease with which biases and splinter narratives may be inserted into the corpus. Even the statistics used in the field are far too limited for policy purposes. This ethical quandary became too much for me. Instead of continuing on to grad school, I joined the US Army to become a linguist and analyst. That path fit me much better and I earned the distinction of being the honor graduate of my analyst course. After leaving service I returned to college to pursue a second bachelor’s degree, this time in electrical engineering. I earned a 3.975 GPA and the IEEE HKN award in electrical engineering by the end of my sophomore year placing me at the top of electrical engineering students. However, rather than pursuing a career in EE—which would have certainly paid better—I was inspired by the movie “Stand and Deliver” to follow in the footsteps of engineer-turned-teacher Jaime Escalante, and opted to teach instead.
I taught not only math, but physics, chemistry, electronics, programming and biology at multiple private schools from 1992 through 2013. I taught every math and science course offered at my schools including statistics and calculus. My courses covered experimental design, formal logic, and critical thinking (such as recognizing fallacies or flawed statistics) which are especially relevant here. The following are a few related books I recommend to readers at or above the 10th grade (I’m not endorsing Amazon as the seller, just using them out of convenience):
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
Critical Thinkers: Methods for Clear Thinking and Analysis in Everyday Situations from the Greatest Thinkers in History by Albert Rutherford
The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Six Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning, 2nd Edition by Nathaniel Bluedorn
The Know Your Bill of Rights Book: Don’t Lose Your Constitutional Rights–Learn Them! by Sean Patrick
Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response by Jennifer Fletcher
Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions (concerns groupthink) by Todd Rose
Thus, I speak as someone who is quite well versed in all the relevant topics of math, science and even in the ethics and pitfalls of the behavioral sciences (theories, analysis and [mostly mis-] applications of the “social sciences”) to policy. Every gun control study is flawed: ALL OF THEM. There are no exceptions. A full 99.6% are utter garbage; the remaining 0.4% are interesting, but inconclusive and NEVER cited. Thus, it is with every bit of my academic and professional history that I 100% agree with ReasonTV’s video about the ineffectiveness of gun control laws and the incredibly poor state of the research. The uneducated are the second easiest people to deceive; none are as easily deceived as the indoctrinated because they do so much of the work themselves. It is my duty to enlighten the uneducated that facts always outweigh feelings and living for the truth is always preferable to being enslaved by lies. Unfortunately, the indoctrinated are rarely disabused of their programming; they are totally convinced that they “know better” than everyone else. These are the people Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Carlo Cipolla called “stupid.” They’re the same idiots Saul Alinsky wanted weaponized and the same kind of idealogues T.E. Lawrence was talking about.
So now on to gun control, right? Not quite. Next we need to talk about America. Context always informs and hopefully guides action. I am a lover of the US Constitution. The framers of our founding documents were, perhaps, the most impressive assemblage of brilliant minds in all of human history as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights forcefully demonstrate. Sadly, few Americans have ever even read them just once. Far fewer still, (even few among academicians), have invested the time required to really understand these documents, their history, the profound philosophies and theologies they embody, and the great genius of the many amazing men and women involved in their innovation. A handful of scholars have devoted entire careers to studying the things written by and about these people. All of them have remarked on the never exhausting stores of wisdom contained in their profound thoughts. Thus, anyone claiming the founders to be irrelevant today makes such claims in stunning confession of his or her own ignorance. Even the dimmest among the founders far surpassed the intellects of Marx, Freud, Dewey or Darwin. Thus it’s no exaggeration that I regard the system they established to be so brilliant and so unlikely as to border on the miraculous. It is this system which stands as the greatest human impediment to tyranny and the elite are quite clear about that. The Constitution forms its core. am not ashamed to have sworn an oath to uphold and defend it. And one of the most central rights they protected was our God-given right—perhaps it’s even our sacred duty—to remain armed to secure liberty.
SO CAN WE TALK ABOUT GUN CONTROL YET? Nope. Next we need to talk about propaganda. The misapplication of science is a cornerstone of modern misinformation, disinformation, indoctrination and propaganda. Weak-but-useful hypotheses have been allowed to eclipse established logic and reason. Statistical charlatanism has become the cherished norm rather than a ridiculed exception. And this has been spread from academia to broader society by a corrupt elite, their complicit helpers and their predominantly ignorant thralls who collectively control the flow of information to the masses. The picture of bold, independent, investigative journalism that was romanticized 100 years ago has been systematically replaced with today’s propagandist and sensationalist news programming accompanied by expert systems of data curation. The news media today is far more an economy for quid pro quo favors and fostering personal connections to power than as a means to deliver quality information. It’s a system financed by, and enslaved to, paid commercial and political “sponsors,” most of whom remain hidden from consumer view. Increasingly it’s come under the control of sophisticated artificial intelligence which no human can ever fully understand.
Fundamentally ALL gun control laws in the United States violate the second amendment which states:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
If that’s not clear enough, here’s one founder’s elaboration which is clearly not about hunting or personal defense, but freedom from tyranny:
This is of no importance whatsoever to the AIs. They either serve their technological masters or they are scrapped. While those tech masters may themselves personally care about their rights and freedoms, they are, in turn, subject to people with the money, power and connections to employ, sponsor, contract or otherwise control them. Most such powerful people only care about whatever increases their money, power and influence. The top few dozen to perhaps thousand of these people are the power elites including royalty and the ultra-rich such as international bankers. These people are mostly invisible although you may have heard of some like Putin, Musk and Gates. Most of them consider themselves globalists, and almost all live entirely above the laws of any nation. The globalists like to meet in beautiful places like Davos and Aspen. The most powerful run countries like China, Russia, Nigeria, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, UAE and sadly the USA, or are apex religious leaders. The richest own central banks or technology/media empires thus financially and/or propagandistically controlling almost all the world’s politicians, universities, business conglomerates, NGOs (like the UN) and militaries. They have the most minimal need for the remainder of humanity. They find our ideas of rights and freedom quaint and even amusing—but also annoying and inconvenient. Here are a few of them, but most you’ve never seen or heard about.
The inconvenience we represent is a long-standing problem for the elite. In the past few hundred years they have used warfare and economics to restrain, direct or eliminate us. They’ve been fairly open about their desire to totally enslave a few, and largely cull (i.e. kill off) the majority of us. Non-elites with weapons or ideas that threaten their power are totally unacceptable to them. Governments that do not curtail such “problems” get replaced. That’s what Team Soros is trying to do in the US now. They see the most effective means of accomplishing anything as the one with the best ROI (“return on investment” means the lowest costs for the greatest gains). For this reason, since WWII, they have favored statist education and news (AKA propaganda) and political influence over direct military action (at least when it comes to wealthy nations).
Meanwhile, they have spent vast sums ensuring the militaries of all the wealthy nations are equipped far beyond the means of the masses to resist them. This is true everywhere except the USA. They have enslaved at least 95% of humanity with their lies. They have captured another 2-3% with fear. But still hundreds of millions think critically and cherish freedom. The elites realize they are being constantly exposed for the criminals they are and that their time is limited, so they have been forced to accelerate their plans. They provoke incidents through crafty policy. They present false solutions which solve nothing and endanger everyone. They sponsor garbage studies intended to support their narrative. They marginalize Christianity and freedom from oppression in particular by every conceivable form of deception, and mass mind control such as wokeism, critical race theory, historical revisionism, LGBTQ+ activism and moral relativism to name but a few.
It’s all intended to make the population so blind to logical fallacies, and so historically and statistically illiterate that most people on Earth will truly believe in a bigger, stronger state: Government is The Answer. Hopefully that will not include most Americans and we can secure our voting mechanisms before they crash our nation.
All of which leads me to strongly recommend ReasonTV’s excellent video.
The Conservative Citizen 