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An Honest Liberal Writes about Gun Control
Townhall.com ^ | December 17, 2012 | Daniel J. Mitchell

Posted on 12/17/2012 5:49:02 AM PST by Kaslin

I wrote earlier this month about an honest liberal who acknowledged the problems created by government dependency. Well, it happened again.

First, some background.

Like every other decent person, I was horrified and nauseated by the school shootings in Newton, Connecticut.

Part of me wishes the guy hadn’t killed himself so that he could be slowly fed into a meat grinder.

And my friends on the left will be happy to know that part of me, when I first learned about the murders, thought the world might be a better place if guns had never been invented.

Sort of like my gut reaction about cigarettes when I find out that somebody I know is dying of a smoking-related illness or how I feel about gambling when I read about a family being ruined because some jerk thought it would be a good idea to use the mortgage money at a casino.

But there’s a reason why it’s generally not a good idea to make impulsive decisions based on immediate reactions. In the case of gun control, it can lead to policies that don’t work. Or perhaps even make a bad situation worse.

I’ve certainly made these points when writing and pontificating about gun control. But I’m a libertarian, so that’s hardly a surprise. We’re people who instinctively are skeptical of giving government power over individuals.

But when someone on the left reaches the same conclusion, that’s perhaps more significant. Especially when you get the feeling that they would like ban private gun ownership in their version of a perfect world.

That’s why I heartily recommend Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic.

Here are some of the most profound passages in the article, beginning with a common-sense observation that there’s no way for the government to end private gun ownership.

According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 47 percent of American adults keep at least one gun at home or on their property, and many of these gun owners are absolutists opposed to any government regulation of firearms. According to the same poll, only 26 percent of Americans support a ban on handguns. …There are ways, of course, to make it at least marginally more difficult for the criminally minded, for the dangerously mentally ill, and for the suicidal to buy guns and ammunition. …But these gun-control efforts, while noble, would only have a modest impact on the rate of gun violence in America. Why? Because it’s too late. There are an estimated 280 million to 300 million guns in private hands in America—many legally owned, many not. Each year, more than 4 million new guns enter the market. …America’s level of gun ownership means that even if the Supreme Court—which ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment gives citizens the individual right to own firearms, as gun advocates have long insisted—suddenly reversed itself and ruled that the individual ownership of handguns was illegal, there would be no practical way for a democratic country to locate and seize those guns.

Which is why prohibition was a flop. Which is why the current War on Drugs is so misguided. And so on and so on.

The author then wonders whether the best way of protecting public safety is to have more gun ownership.

Which raises a question: When even anti-gun activists believe that the debate over private gun ownership is closed; when it is too late to reduce the number of guns in private hands—and since only the naive think that legislation will prevent more than a modest number of the criminally minded, and the mentally deranged, from acquiring a gun in a country absolutely inundated with weapons—could it be that an effective way to combat guns is with more guns? Today, more than 8 million vetted and (depending on the state) trained law-abiding citizens possess state-issued “concealed carry” handgun permits, which allow them to carry a concealed handgun or other weapon in public. Anti-gun activists believe the expansion of concealed-carry permits represents a serious threat to public order. But what if, in fact, the reverse is true? Mightn’t allowing more law-abiding private citizens to carry concealed weapons—when combined with other forms of stringent gun regulation—actually reduce gun violence?

He cites examples where armed citizens stopped mass killings.

In 1997, a disturbed high-school student named Luke Woodham stabbed his mother and then shot and killed two people at Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi. He then began driving toward a nearby junior high to continue his shooting spree, but the assistant principal of the high school, Joel Myrick, aimed a pistol he kept in his truck at Woodham, causing him to veer off the road. Myrick then put his pistol to Woodham’s neck and disarmed him. On January 16, 2002, a disgruntled former student at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, had killed three people, including the school’s dean, when two students, both off-duty law-enforcement officers, retrieved their weapons and pointed them at the shooter, who ended his killing spree and surrendered. In December 2007, a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle and two pistols entered the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and killed two teenage girls before a church member, Jeanne Assam—a former Minneapolis police officer and a volunteer church security guard—shot and wounded the gunman, who then killed himself.

The author also punctures the left’s mythology about concealed carry laws.

In 2003, John Gilchrist, the legislative counsel for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, testified, “If 200,000 to 300,000 citizens begin carrying a concealed weapon, common sense tells us that accidents will become a daily event.” When I called Gilchrist recently, he told me that events since the state’s concealed-carry law took effect have proved his point. …Gilchrist’s argument would be convincing but for one thing: the firearm crime rate in Ohio remained steady after the concealed-carry law passed in 2004.

Goldberg elaborates.

Today, the number of concealed-carry permits is the highest it’s ever been, at 8 million, and the homicide rate is the lowest it’s been in four decades—less than half what it was 20 years ago. (The number of people allowed to carry concealed weapons is actually considerably higher than 8 million, because residents of Vermont, Wyoming, Arizona, Alaska, and parts of Montana do not need government permission to carry their personal firearms. These states have what Second Amendment absolutists refer to as “constitutional carry,” meaning, in essence, that the Second Amendment is their permit.) Many gun-rights advocates see a link between an increasingly armed public and a decreasing crime rate. “I think effective law enforcement has had the biggest impact on crime rates, but I think concealed carry has something to do with it. We’ve seen an explosion in the number of people licensed to carry,” Lott told me. “You can deter criminality through longer sentencing, and you deter criminality by making it riskier for people to commit crimes. And one way to make it riskier is to create the impression among the criminal population that the law-abiding citizen they want to target may have a gun.” Crime statistics in Britain, where guns are much scarcer, bear this out. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, wrote in his 1991 book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, that only 13 percent of burglaries in America occur when the occupant is home. In Britain, so-called hot burglaries account for about 45 percent of all break-ins. Kleck and others attribute America’s low rate of occupied-home burglaries to fear among criminals that homeowners might be armed. (A survey of almost 2,000 convicted U.S. felons, conducted by the criminologists Peter Rossi and James D. Wright in the late ’80s, concluded that burglars are more afraid of armed homeowners than they are of arrest by the police.)

That last bit of info is very powerful. The bad guys are more afraid of armed homeowners than the police. Surely, as I explained here, that tells us that gun ownership lowers crime.

Here’s another no-sh*t-Sherlock observation from the article.

It is also illogical for campuses to advertise themselves as “gun-free.” Someone bent on murder is not usually dissuaded by posted anti-gun regulations. Quite the opposite—publicly describing your property as gun-free is analogous to posting a notice on your front door saying your home has no burglar alarm. As it happens, the company that owns the Century 16 Cineplex in Aurora had declared the property a gun-free zone.

I recently mocked the idea of gun-free zones with several amusing posters. It’s unbelievable that some people think that killers care about such rules.

One place that isn’t likely to see any massacres is Colorado State University.

For much of the population of a typical campus, concealed-carry permitting is not an issue. Most states that issue permits will grant them only to people who are at least 21 years old. But the crime-rate statistics at universities that do allow permit holders on campus with their weapons are instructive. An hour north of Boulder, in Fort Collins, sits Colorado State University. Concealed carry has been allowed at CSU since 2003, and according to James Alderden, the former sheriff of Larimer County, which encompasses Fort Collins, violent crime at Colorado State has dropped since then.

I also recommend this video, which makes fun of those who support gun-free zones.

Here is Goldberg’s conclusion.

But I am sympathetic to the idea of armed self-defense, because it does often work, because encouraging learned helplessness is morally corrupt, and because, however much I might wish it, the United States is not going to become Canada. Guns are with us, whether we like it or not. Maybe this is tragic, but it is also reality. So Americans who are qualified to possess firearms shouldn’t be denied the right to participate in their own defense. And it is empirically true that the great majority of America’s tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners have not created chaos in society.

Goldberg’s article, by the way, doesn’t even mention the value of private gun ownership when government fails to maintain public order, as occurred after Hurricane Sandy and during last year’s British riots.

I have a couple of final things to share, including this this video about a woman who lost her parents because she decided to obey a bad government law. And here’s a great study from Cato about individuals using guns to protect themselves.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: 2012; armedcitizen; banglist; guncontrol; gunfreezone; newtown; secondamendment; shallnotbeinfringed; youwillnotdisarmus
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To: Kaslin

Looking at the headline, I though article must be satire.


21 posted on 12/17/2012 6:53:14 AM PST by svcw (Why is one cell on another planet considered life, and in the womb it is not.)
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To: txnativegop

You are welcome


22 posted on 12/17/2012 7:02:06 AM PST by Kaslin ( One Big Ass Mistake America (Make that Two))
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To: moovova

A rarity for sure


23 posted on 12/17/2012 7:03:14 AM PST by Kaslin ( One Big Ass Mistake America (Make that Two))
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To: DuncanWaring

How many infants were killed by the sword by Ramses army?

How many infants were killed by the sword by Herod’s army?

How many children were killed by the hoards of other armies (Muslim, Mongols, Christians) through out time before firearms were invented?

How many unarmed people were killed from other than a gun between 1935 and 1945?

Guns are not the problem, people are, outlaw people...


24 posted on 12/17/2012 7:05:21 AM PST by Resolute Conservative
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To: reefdiver

Very well said. It is the press that needs regulating


25 posted on 12/17/2012 7:05:52 AM PST by Kaslin ( One Big Ass Mistake America (Make that Two))
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To: Kaslin
BTTT

Mass Killings Stopped by Armed Citizens

Why the Gun is Civilization

A Nation of Cowards


Pacifism: The Ultimate Immorality by Raymond Kraft

Last week, Jack and Jill Pacifisto were walking home through the park after dinner with friends, during which they had spent a few hours discussing the immorality of violence and war and their commitments to send more money to progressive activists over the next year. Suddenly, Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows and pointed a pistol at Jack and said, “Give me your wallet,” and, pointing the gun at Jill, “Your purse.”

“What?” asked Jack, incredulous, “Hey, we don’t want any trouble. We’re pacifists. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your money.”

So Jack and Jill did, and then Tony said, “And now gimme your watches, rings, jewelry, everything worth anything.”

“Hey,” said Jill, “This is my wedding ring!”

And Tony said, “Not my problem.”

Jack and Jill handed over their wallet, and purse, and all their jewelry and Rolex watches, and then Tony shot them both twice in the chest and picked up the loot and stepped back into the shadows.

As Jill lay dying she whispered, “Jack? Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you have a gun?” Those were her last words.

“I couldn’t,” whispered Jack. “I’m a pacifist.” Those were his last words.

A few days later, Bill Thaxton and his wife were walking home through the park after dinner, when Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows.

“Give me your wallet, your purse,” said Tony, pointing his gun first at Bill, and then at his wife. He did not know that Bill was an old lawman, and had been a Marine sniper when he was young, and was active in the Single Action Shooters Society and had a concealed-carry-permit. Tony assumed that the old man was just an old man with some money and a few credit cards in his wallet walking home from dinner.

“Sorry, friend, I don’t like guns, and I don’t want any trouble,” said Bill.

“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your wallet, your purse,” he said, waving the gun at Bill’s wife, “Rings, watches, everything.”

“And what if I don’t?” asked Bill.

“I’ll shoot you both. Her first,” said Tony, pointing his gun at Bill’s wife again.

“Well,” said Bill, “Okay, honey, do what he says.”

She tossed down her purse. Bill reached slowly for his left lapel with his right hand and then, like lightning, did a cross-draw with his left and came out blazing with his trusty little 9, nailing Tony three times.

As he lay on the sidewalk dying, Tony Thug was heard to mutter, “Damn, I shoulda stuck with the pacifists . . .”

An acquaintance wrote me last week to tell me proudly how he had been a pacifist since the ‘60s. His letter set me thinking about pacifism, which is the ultimate and vilest form of immorality.

If you are Hitler, or Saddam, or Osama, or Ahmadinejad, your desire to kill those you dislike is at least honest and open. You wear you hate on your sleeve and we know who and what you are. But the Pacifist wears his refusal to resist evil as if it were a badge of honor, and claims it as a sign of his or her absolute moral superiority. The Hitlers and Osamas are at least honest about who they are, the Pacifist is not. Not even to himself.

The German Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote a poem circa 1946 about the quiescence of German intellectuals in the face of the Nazi rise to power that has become famous. Translated, it reads:

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent,

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists

I did not speak out,

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews

I did not speak out,

I was not a Jew.

When they came for me

there was no one left to speak out.

The Pacifist says something like this, but, unlike Niemoller, without apology. He says:

When you come for my allies

I will not fight you,

for I am a Pacifist.

When you come for my countrymen

I will not fight you,

for I am a Pacifist.

When you come for my neighbor,

I will not fight you,

for I am a Pacifist.

When you come for my mother,

my father, my brother,

my sister, I will not fight you,

for I am a Pacifist.

When you come for my wife,

my husband, my son,

my daughter, I will not fight you,

for I am a Pacifist.

When you come for me,

I will not fight you,

for I am a Pacifist.

The Pacifist claims that he (or she) is too good to fight against evil, and this is the catastrophic intellectual and moral failure of Pacifism. In the guise of being too good to oppose evil, the Pacifist invokes the ultimate immorality by aiding and abetting and encouraging evil, on the pretext of being too pure, too wise, too sophisticated to fight evil, thereby turning the pretense of goodness and purity into an invocation and license for evil to act without opposition.

The moral stance of the Pacifist is, unwittingly perhaps, homicidal, genocidal, fratricidal, suicidal. The Pacifist says, in effect: “There is nothing good worth fighting for. And there is nothing so evil worth fighting against.”

The Pacifist is willing to give evil free reign, because he or she thinks or feels that fighting against evil is even worse than evil itself . . . an intellectual and moral equivocation of monumentally staggering proportions. In order to be a Pacifist, one must hold that Nazism or Islamism or Communism or any other puritanical totalitarian ideology that seeks to slaughter or oppress all the Jews or all of any other race or tribe is no worse, is not morally inferior, to the existence of Jews and Judaism, or whatever other race or tribe is the whipping boy of the day.

To be a Pacifist, one must hold that acquiescence to a Jihad that seeks to destroy Western Civilization is no worse than Western Civilization, even though the Jihad seeks to extinguish intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, and ultimately even the freedom to be a Pacifist.

As the English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Pacifist replies, “I am so good that I will do nothing, I will hurt no one, even if that means that good will be destroyed and evil will win. I am so peaceful that I will not discriminate between the goodness of good and the badness of evil, certainly not with enough conviction to take up arms, literally or figuratively, against the triumph of evil over good, of totalitarianism over freedom, of barbarianism over civilization.”

And so the Pacifist, perhaps unthinkingly, unwittingly, mistakenly, is deeply mired in his intellectual confusion, but surely and unequivocally, the epitome of evil itself, For the Pacifist devoutly believes that by refusing to fight against evil he is affirming that he is good, too good and pure to oppose evil, too good and pure to fight evil, to good and pure to kill evil. But in the end, he is the enabler without whom the triumph of evil would not be possible.




26 posted on 12/17/2012 7:06:35 AM PST by EdReform (Oath Keepers - Guardians of the Republic - Honor your oath - Join us: www.oathkeepers.org)
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To: Haiku Guy

You can make a flame thrower for under $100.

Would the kids be better off if he burned them alive?

If a nut wants to kill they will find a way to do it.


27 posted on 12/17/2012 7:09:20 AM PST by IMR 4350
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To: EQAndyBuzz
None of the children were killed, and I don't know if the woman was killed who he knifed first. The article doesn't say

22 Chinese schoolchildren hurt in stabbing spree

28 posted on 12/17/2012 7:13:43 AM PST by Kaslin ( One Big Ass Mistake America (Make that Two))
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To: Resolute Conservative
Guns are not the problem, people are, outlaw people..

You said it

29 posted on 12/17/2012 7:16:07 AM PST by Kaslin ( One Big Ass Mistake America (Make that Two))
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To: IMR 4350
You’re right. 19 children died in the OKC bombing, no gun involved. CT has among the toughest gun control laws in the country. There is already a federal law prohibiting firearms of any kind in school buildings. None of that was a deterrent in this case.
30 posted on 12/17/2012 7:23:55 AM PST by chimera
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To: chainsaw
"...And before that, sticks and stones..."

And before that, people probably just choked each other or pushed one another off a cliff....it goes way back.

31 posted on 12/17/2012 7:24:38 AM PST by Victor (If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert." -David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister)
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To: Victor

Gun control really works, just as the folks who live (and die) in Chicago. It is NOT the gun, its the person using it, plain and simple. Look at the 20 recent stabbings in a school in China, that killer used a knife.

Personally I believe there should never be mention of a shooters name in cases such as the shootings in Conn. Eliminate their name and the 15 minutes of fame and perhaps, just perhaps there might be a few less shootings.


32 posted on 12/17/2012 7:31:03 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: DuncanWaring

The Declaration of Independence said that all men are created equal. Samuel Colt made them equal.


33 posted on 12/17/2012 7:39:17 AM PST by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class.)
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To: Kaslin

The Democrats believe that their best ‘weapon’ against the 2nd Amendment will be new and very high taxes at the Fed, State, and local level on firearms and firearm ammunition.

Chicago’s Cook County drops bullet tax, keeps gun levy
By Mary Wisniewski | Reuters – Wed, Oct 31, 2012

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The senior executive of the county that includes Chicago dropped a proposed tax on bullets on Wednesday but kept a plan to tax firearms to help defray healthcare expenses associated with the high rate of gun.

“It is very important to us to tax guns because we know that guns are the sources of the incredible violence we have in our neighborhoods,”

Under the plan, the county would impose a $25 tax on the purchase of firearms.

If approved by the board, the nation’s third most populous county with nearly 5.2 million residents could be the first major U.S. metropolitan area to impose a tax as a form of gun control, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

http://news.yahoo.com

“The notion of taxing ammunition may be traced to comedian Chris Rock, who once quipped, “If a bullet costs $5,000, there’d be no more innocent bystanders.” Before that, the legendary New York Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested a 10,000 percent tax on the most destructive bullets. Make them too expensive, he theorized, and they would disappear.”

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-14/news/ct-oped-1014-chapman-20121013_1_gun-owners-gun-control-destructive-bullets

If Guns Do Not Kill, Tax the Bullets
By JIM DWYER

Published: August 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/nyregion/taxing-bullets-as-de-facto-gun-control.html?_r=0

The Economist - 1994

“The idea of a license for gun owners has been floated by Mr Clinton and by Janet Reno, the attorney-general; it is argued most strongly by Charles Schumer, a Democratic congressman from Brooklyn. Under Mr Schumer’s bill, which is now before Congress, every owner would have a national handgun card, issued after a thorough background check, and all gun transfers would be registered with the ATF.”


34 posted on 12/17/2012 7:40:53 AM PST by KeyLargo
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To: Kaslin

An armed citizen is a free man. An unarmed subject is a serf.


35 posted on 12/17/2012 7:42:32 AM PST by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class.)
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To: chimera
He could have done it any number of ways besides a gun.

Had he gone in there with a machete those teachers weren't prepared to take him on.

Any way he chose to do it, nobody was prepared to stop him and he knew it.

36 posted on 12/17/2012 7:47:50 AM PST by IMR 4350
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To: Oberon
In Rwanda, the machete was a popular weapon for mass killings in the most recent civil war. It never runs out of ammunition.

And you can make one very easily in your back yard.

37 posted on 12/17/2012 7:48:08 AM PST by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class.)
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To: iacovatx
In American society today, as in any human society, there is an imbalance in protective abilities among individuals. Firearms can help protect the weak and vulnerable from the strong and immoral.

IOW, God created Man, Samuel Colt made them equal.

38 posted on 12/17/2012 7:50:19 AM PST by Ancesthntr (Banning guns to prevent crime is like banning cars to prevent drunk driving.)
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To: Kaslin

Great post. A heck of a lot of useful info for anyone wanting to engage in a debate with Leftists on this subject. Thanks!


39 posted on 12/17/2012 8:00:23 AM PST by tanknetter
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To: Haiku Guy
It seems to me tragedy could’ve been averted had the shooter’s mother stored her guns in a safe. I know there are those who don’t like safe storage laws, but it seems to me that if you’re going to have crazy people visiting the house, keeping the guns under lock and key might be a good idea.

In this particular case, the mother KNEW that her son was crazy - she had even warned a babysitter years earlier not to turn her back on him. In view of that, having ANY gun out of a safe (except maybe a single handgun with one or two mags, at night, right next to her - to be locked away each morning) was HIGHLY irresponsible. Actually, IMHO, it was criminally irresponsible. She paid the price here, and is likely paying it elsewhere right now.

Of course, people should be permitted to store their own guns however they want. As far as I’m concerned, the primary purpose of privately owned guns is political, rather than bump in the night type protection. So storage in a safe works for me.

It isn't just political. Robberies and home invasions occur every single night of the year, all over the country. I have no problem with having immediate access to one or two firearms - i.e. a pistol with a mag or 2, plus a shottie - but if there are kids or mentally-challenged/disturbed people in residence or visiting, common sense says that you lock away anything that is not directly on your person so that those people have no access. No problem people around? Then have a loaded gun in every room of the house as far as I'm concerned. As for me, I have elementary-aged kids, and they've been to the range and know NEVER to touch any gun without my wife or I present and giving permission, but I still lock away everything except a S&W J-frame that is hidden from them but easy to get to in a hurry if I need it.

40 posted on 12/17/2012 8:00:32 AM PST by Ancesthntr (Banning guns to prevent crime is like banning cars to prevent drunk driving.)
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