Harlan Ellison's classic “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” describes the very society of which you speak. Everyone has a “cardioplate” installed in their bodies. The authoritarian government, personified by the Ticktockman, can stop anyone’s heart at the press of a button, no matter where they are. The story begins with a relevant quote.
There are always those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know “where it’s at,” this: “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”
Reductions in access to quick and effective means of suicide are very strongly correlated to reductions in suicide rates. The causal connection is also clear: most suicides are impulsive, and the urge can last only a few minutes. One second with a loaded gun is long enough to commit suicide.
The more difficult and time consuming it is to commit suicide by a given method, the more likely it is that the urge will pass and the person will decide not to kill themselves.
Gun advocates have no way to counter the fact that gun ownership increases suicide except to ignore the evidence that the correlations exist in multiple cultures and multiple suicide methods, to ignore the evidence that suicidal impulses are usually momentary, and to ignore the fact that it is much, much, much easier and quicker for someone to kill themselves with a gun than by virtually any other common method.
Only by blinding oneself to facts and to logic is it possible to believe that ready access to guns does not lead to substantial numbers of people committing suicide who otherwise would not have.
Certainly, some people can and do commit suicide by other methods. That does not justify the common yet false belief that all of them would. Ideology is not knowledge, and belief is not understanding.
The Second Amendment makes private firearm ownership legal. It does not now, nor has it ever made private firearm ownership sensible.
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Re: This tech does part exist at least enough to 90 percent implement it.
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
Re: Are you sure we are talking about Canada?
http://actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/sites/actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/ files/Reducing%20a%20Suicidal%20Persons%20Access%20to%20Lethal.pdf
Reductions in access to quick and effective means of suicide are very strongly correlated to reductions in suicide rates. The causal connection is also clear: most suicides are impulsive, and the urge can last only a few minutes. One second with a loaded gun is long enough to commit suicide.
The more difficult and time consuming it is to commit suicide by a given method, the more likely it is that the urge will pass and the person will decide not to kill themselves.
Gun advocates have no way to counter the fact that gun ownership increases suicide except to ignore the evidence that the correlations exist in multiple cultures and multiple suicide methods, to ignore the evidence that suicidal impulses are usually momentary, and to ignore the fact that it is much, much, much easier and quicker for someone to kill themselves with a gun than by virtually any other common method.
Only by blinding oneself to facts and to logic is it possible to believe that ready access to guns does not lead to substantial numbers of people committing suicide who otherwise would not have.
Certainly, some people can and do commit suicide by other methods. That does not justify the common yet false belief that all of them would. Ideology is not knowledge, and belief is not understanding.
The Second Amendment makes private firearm ownership legal. It does not now, nor has it ever made private firearm ownership sensible.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by ClementC.
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