George Jonas: Want a gun permit? tell us about your sex life

National Post ^ | 15 April, 2009 | George Jonas,

[marktwain]

‘What’s your topic?’ my editor wanted to know. “Guns once more, with feeling,” I replied, although I could have saved a syllable by saying simply “Guns more with feeling.” The late opera composer Tibor Polgar urged his librettists to save syllables. “To make the world a better place,” he used to say.

No doubt. Saving a syllable here, a question there, a requirement or prohibition somewhere else, to say nothing of a policy or law, might make the world more livable. Saving our breath is the best solution in the end — but in the interim it’s hard not to talk about guns once more.

Pierre Lemieux is an economist whose most recent book, Comprendre l’économie, just won the prestigious Prix Turgot in Paris. When it comes to guns, he’s a hobbyist, not a lobbyist, but in his spare time he has been trying to make the authorities comprehend something about the relationship between public safety and his love life. Not because he thinks there’s a nexus, but because the government does.

Before renewing his gun permit in 2007, the authorities decided to inquire into Lemieux’s bedroom history. Did he divorce anyone in the last two years? Did he break up with a girlfriend? If yes, use a separate sheet to explain.

Pardon me? Explain?

[marktwain]

Very well written. Worth a read.

[RipSawyer]

“Lemieux should win his court challenge in a sane world — but in a sane world there would be no government intrusions to challenge in the first place. The challenge arises because ours is an insane world, with temporary remissions during which we write constitutions and bills of rights — then lapse back into lunacy and plead with judges to abort whatever embryonic issues are left over from our one-night stands with liberty.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I love this paragraph! It says exactly what I think about the world, long periods of idiocy occasionally broken by brief flashes of logical thinking. The hardest job of all is learning to think, I am still working on it as my 65th birthday approaches and I don’t expect to ever master it totally but I constantly meet people who seem never to have even attempted it.

It took me a huge part of my life just to come to grips with the idea that a person can have a very high IQ and many years of formal education but be unable to recognize basic truths that were obvious to most charecroppers with a fourth grade education a hundred years ago.

[OneWingedShark]

Indeed, thank you for posting.

[gimme1ibertee]

Thanks for the article link. In addition,i'd like to say that the VT massacre was so tragic and sensational for more than one reason...the most obvious reason aside, it was also so disturbing because it was something that was an anomaly.We simply don't have people going school to school,committing one widespread massacre after another.That was the sensationalism of it.
If guns were truly the problem, given the millions of guns in circulation in the US and elsewhere,you would see these kinds of tragedies on a daily basis. Of course,you'll never convince the gun-grabbers of that,because they can't hear through all of their moaning and sobbing over the inanimate object they despise so much-not to mention the law-abiding citizens who lawfully and safely possess them.