Jim Thompson’s article (“Second Amendment was put in place to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government,” AFN, Jan. 25), asserting that the Second Amendment was designed to protect us from federal tyranny, reveals the politically reactionary mind in its most gloriously convoluted illogic.
Thompson first condemns my refutation of pro-gun propagandist John Lott’s thesis that “for each 1 percent reduction in gun ownership there is a 3 percent increase in violent crime” (AFN, Jan. 8). Lott’s unmistakably simple linear equation Thompson calls a LOGARITHMIC function. Why not call it a differential equation?
That would be no more senseless.
In his anti-federal tyranny thesis, Thompson cites a long Hitler quote, dated 155 years after the constitutional convention, which allegedly helps to explain why the founders drafted the Second Amendment. The Hitler quote is totally irrelevant.
James Madison not only rebutted the federal-tyranny thesis; he ridiculed it. In Federalist Paper 46, Madison plaintively asked the Constitution’s opponents “what madness could ever drive the Federal government to such an extremity?” In subsequent remarks, he denounced his opponents’ deluded paranoia as “the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggeration of a counterfeit zeal, (not) the sober apprehension of genuine patriotism.”
The Constitution’s opponents, rebutted by Madison for their fears of federal tyranny, were the ideological precursors of today’s right-wing fanatics, who equate the slightest gun-control efforts with demands for universal gun confiscation.
• C.W. (Bill) Griffin is a retired consulting engineer. He has lived in Ahwatukee Foothills for 22 years.
Chet posted at 10:44 am on Mon, Feb 11, 2013.
I have to keep posting this.
Here's why you can go to sleep tonight and not worry about Big Scary Obama coming for your guns, and it's called Math.
Police and the military have 4 million guns.
American citizens have 300 million guns, and 4 to 8 million of those are military style weapons.
So by the numbers, the Big Scary Government is outgunned 75 to 1. Evil Obama and the UN are not coming for your guns, even if they wanted to, it's not a doable thing.
So everyone please settle down and find something useful to worry about, something that could actually happen.
afnanalog posted at 11:40 am on Tue, Feb 5, 2013.
Griffin is all mouth and no brains, and certainly no engineer. Math literate persons are referred to these links...
http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/IntroductionToFirstorderDifferenceEquations_Brown_EmoryU.pdf
http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/Difference_Equations-Earnshaw.pdf
afnanalog posted at 12:16 pm on Mon, Feb 4, 2013.
Griffin is our neighborhood first class village idiot. His wrong-headed rant against the logarithmic math is absolutely asinine. He calls himself an "engineer"... what a laugh!