Month: October 2025

While the classic werewolf is a human with the ability to shift into the shape of a wolf, movies usually show a transformation into a wolf-human hybrid. The standard werewolf has a taste for human flesh, a vulnerability to silver and a serious shedding problem. Some werewolves have impressive basketball skills, but that is not a standard werewolf ability.

There have been various efforts to explain werewolf myths and legends. Some of the scientific (or at least pseudo-scientific) theories include mental illness or disease. On these accounts, the werewolf does not transform into a wolf-like creature; they are afflicted people. These non-magical werewolves are possible but are more tragic than horrific.

There are also supernatural accounts of werewolves, many involving vague references to curses. In many tales, the condition can be transmitted, perhaps by a bite or even by texting. These magical beasts are not possible unless, of course, this is a magical world.

There has even been some speculation about technology-based shifters, perhaps nanotechnology that can rapidly re-structure a living creature without killing it. But these would be werewolves of science fiction.

Interestingly enough, there could also be philosophical werewolves (which, to steal from Adventure Time, could be called “whywolves”) that have a solid metaphysical foundation. Well, as solid as metaphysics gets.

Our good dead friend Plato (who was probably not a werewolf) laid out a theory of Forms. According to Plato, the Forms are supposed to be eternal, perfect entities that exist outside of space and time. As such, they are even weirder than werewolves. However, they neither shed nor consume human flesh, so they have some positive qualities relative to werewolves.

For Plato, all the particular entities in this imperfect realm are what they are in virtue of their instantiation of Forms. This is sometimes called “participation”, perhaps to make the particulars sound like they have civic virtue. To illustrate this with an example, my husky Isis was a husky because she participated in the form of Husky. This is, no doubt, among the noblest and best of dog forms. Likewise, Isis was furry because she instantiated the form of Fur (and shared this instantiation with all things she contacted, such was the depth of her generosity).

While there is some nice stuff here in the world, it is evident that all the particulars lack perfection. For example, while Donald Trump’s buildings are clearly quality structures, they are not perfect buildings. Likewise, while he does have a somewhat orange color, he does not possess perfect Orange (John Boehner is closer to the Form of Orange yet still lacks perfection).

Plato’s account of the imperfection of particulars, like Donald Trump, involves the claim that particulars instantiate or participate in the Forms in varying degrees. When explaining this to my students, I usually use the example of photocopies of various quality. The original is analogous to the Form while the copies of varying quality are analogous to the particulars.  Another example could be selfies taken of a person using cameras of various qualities. I find that the youth relate more to selfies than to photocopies.

Plato also asserts that particulars can instantiate or participate in “contrasting” Forms. He uses the example of how things here in the earthly realm have both Beauty and Ugliness, thus they lack perfect Beauty. For example, even the most attractive supermodel still has flaws. As such, a person’s beauty (or ugliness) is a blend of Beauty and Ugliness. Since people can look more or less beautiful over time (time and gravity are both very mean), this mix can shift and the degree of participation or instantiation can change. This mixing and shifting of instantiation can be used to provide a Platonic account of werewolves (which is not the same as having a Platonic relation with a werewolf).

If the huge assumptions are made that a particular is what it is because it instantiates various Forms and that the instantiations of Forms can be mixed or blended in a particular, then werewolves can easily be given a metaphysical explanation in the context of Forms.

For Plato, a werewolf would be a particular that instantiated the Form of Man but also the Form of Wolf. As such, the being would be part man and part wolf. When the person is participating most in the Form of Man, then he would appear (and act) human. However, when the Form of Wolf became dominant, her form and behavior would shift towards that of the wolf.

Plato mentions the Sun in the Allegory of the Cave as well as the light of the moon. So, it seems appropriate that the moon (which reflects the light of the sun) is credited in many tales with triggering the transformation from human to wolf. Perhaps since, as Aristotle claimed, humans are rational animals, the direct light of the sun means that the human Form is dominant. The reflected light of the full moon would, at least in accord with something I just made up, result in a distortion of reason and thus allow the animal Form of Wolf to dominate. There can also be a nice connection here to Plato’s account of the three-part soul: when the Wolf is in charge, reason is mostly asleep.

While it is the wolf that usually takes the blame for the evil of the werewolf, it seems more plausible that this comes from the form of Man. After all, research on wolves shows that they have been given a bad rap. So, whatever evil is in the werewolf comes from the human part. The howling, though, is all wolf.

Back in 2016 Martin Shkreli became the villain of drug pricing when he increased the price of a $13.50 pill to $750. While buying up smaller drug companies and increasing prices products is a standard profit-making venture, the scale of the increase and Shkreli’s attitude drew attention to this incident. Unfortunately, while the Shkreli episode briefly caught the public’s attention, drug pricing is an ongoing problem.

For consumer, the main problem is that drugs are priced extremely high, sometimes high enough to bankrupt patients. In the face of public criticism, drug companies attempt to justify the high prices. One reason they give is that they need to charge these prices to pay the R&D costs of the drugs. While a company does have the right to pass on the cost of drug development, the facts tell another story about the pricing of drugs.

First, about 38% of the basic research science was funded by taxpayer money.  Thus, the public was paying twice: once in taxes and again for the drugs. This, of course, leaves a significant legitimate area of expenses for companies, but hardly enough to warrant absurdly high prices. As the federal budget for this research is cut, companies will be able to make a better argument based on the cost of research as they will need to spend more of their profits for research.

Second, most large drug companies spend almost twice as much on promotion and marketing as they do on R&D. While these are legitimate business expenses, this undercut using R&D expenses to justify excessive drug prices. Saying that pills are expensive because of the cost of marketing pills would not be a very effective strategy. There is also the issue of the ethics of advertising drugs, which is another matter entirely.

Third, many “new” drugs are just slightly modified old drugs. Common examples including combining two older drugs to create a “new” drug, changing the delivery method (from an injectable to a pill, for example) or altering the release time. In many cases, the government will grant a new patent for these minor tweaks, and this will grant the company up to a 20-year monopoly on the product, preventing competition. This practice, though obviously legal, is sketchy. To use an analogy, imagine a company holding the patents on a wheel and on an axle. Then, when those patents expired, they patented wheel + axle as a “new” invention. That would be absurd.

Companies also try other approaches to justify the high cost, such as arguing that the drugs treat serious conditions or can save money by avoiding a more expensive treatment. While these arguments do have some appeal, it is morally problematic to argue that the price of a drug should be based on the seriousness of the condition it treats. This seems like a protection scheme or coercion amounting to “pay what we want, or you die.” The money-saving argument is less odious but is still problematic. By this logic, car companies should be able to much more for safety features since they protect people from expensive injuries. It is, of course, reasonable to make a profit on products that provide significant benefits, but there need to be moral limits to the profits.

The obvious counter to my approach is to argue that drug prices should be set by the free market: if people are willing to pay large sums for drugs, then the drug companies should be free to charge those prices. After all, companies like Apple and Porsche sell expensive products without (generally) being demonized for making profits.

The easy response is that luxury cars and Macbooks are optional luxuries that a person can easily do without and there are many cheaper (and better) alternatives. However, drug companies sell drugs that are necessary for a person’s health and even survival. They are usually not optional products. There is also the fact that drug companies enjoy patent protection that precludes effective competition. While Apple does hold patents on its devices, there are many competitors. For example, if you don’t want to pay a premium for an Apple computer, you have your pick of thousands of options. But, if you need certain medications, your options can be much more limited.  

While defenders of drug prices laud the free market and decry “government interference”, their ability to charge high prices depends on the “interference” of the state. As noted above, the United States and other governments issue patents to drug companies that grant them exclusive ownership. Without this protection, a company that wanted to charge $750 for a $13.50 pill would find competitors rushing to sell the pill for far less. After all, it would be easy enough for a competitor to analyze a drug and produce it. By accepting the patent system, the drug companies accept that the state has a right to engage in legal regulation in the drug industry, to replace the invisible hand with a very visible hand of the state. Once this is accepted, the door is opened to allowing additional regulation on the grounds that the state will provide protection for the company’s property using taxpayer money in return for the company agreeing not to engage in harmful pricing of drugs. Roughly put, if the drug companies expect people to obey the social contract with the state, they also need to operate within the social contract. Companies could, of course, push for a truly free market: they would be free to charge whatever they want for drugs without state interference, but there would be no state interference into the free market activities of their competitors when they duplicate the high price drugs and start undercutting the prices. But, as always, companies want a free market when freedom benefits them and a nanny state when it benefits them.

In closing, if the drug companies want to keep the patent protection they need for high drug prices, they must be willing to operate within the social contract. After all, citizens should not be imposed upon to fund the protection of the people who are, some might claim, robbing them.

In his first term Trump talked about pardoning himself, his family and others which led to interest in the scope of the pardon power. LegalEagle has an excellent video that walks through key questions about the pardon based on precedent and legal scholarship. My interest, though, is with a seemingly crazy question: could Trump (or any president) pardon everyone for everything forever?

While this question might seem stupid, it is worth considering because it is an invitation to explore the limits of the pardon power of the president. Here is the law as written in the Constitution: “…he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” Since this is but a single sentence, I will also need to rely on legal precedents and informed speculation on the part of Constitutional scholars to answer my question. I will begin with the matter of pardoning everyone.

While there is the question of whether the President can pardon himself, the President can clearly pardon anyone else. The President can also issue mass pardons, as Carter did in the case of the draft dodgers. Since the Constitution does not specify a numerical limit, then Trump does have the power to pardon everybody. If he can pardon anyone and issue mass pardons, then there would seem to be no line that can be drawn forbidding him from extending pardons to everyone. As such, Trump can pardon everyone. But can he pardon everyone for everything?

There are two limits specified on the pardon power. The first is that the pardon only applies to “offenses against the United States.” This has been established to mean federal crimes and so Trump cannot pardon people for state crimes. There have been some attempts to argue that “offenses against the United States” includes all crimes because the states are parts of the United States; but this argument has yet to gain traction. But this could change with a court ruling and the Supreme Court has been, with few exceptions, very cooperative with Trump. The second is that the President cannot pardon in cases of impeachment (Presidential or other). These are the only two limits. As such, the President could pardon anyone for any (or all) federal offense except for impeachment. The final question is whether Trump could pardon forever.

 Thanks to Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, the pardon power has been shown to apply preemptively to crimes for which a person has not been convicted and even those for which a person has not been charged. Ford was acting according to well established law; the Supreme Court ruled that the power to pardon applies  “to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” As such, the President could pardon anyone for everything (except state crimes and impeachment) after the commission of the offense. This does raise the question of how far back in time an offense can be and still be pardonable. The obvious answer is that since the offense must be committed against the United States, the oldest offense that could be pardoned would be set by the beginning of the United States. But what about future crimes?

Talk of pre-emptive pardons can be a bit confusing since this could be taken as pardoning someone for an offense they have yet to commit. But, as noted above, the ruling is that the pardon must come after the offense has been committed. As long as this ruling stands, then Trump cannot pardon people for offenses they have yet to commit. As such, Trump cannot issue a pro-active pardon for an offense that has yet to be committed. So, he cannot pardon everyone for everything forever. While not directly related to time, there is also the question of whether the President can pardon someone for an offense they did not commit.

On the face of it, there would seem to be no reason to pardon a person for an offense they did not commit, they would have no need for it. But a person who has committed no offense might as well accept a pardon. However, this could be a problem for them since the Supreme Court has also ruled that accepting a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance carries a confession.” As such, anyone who accepts a pardon from Trump is admitting guilt and confessing to the offense. While they would avoid the legal consequences for the federal offense, this could impact their reputation (assuming they have any left) and could be used against them. For example, a case can be made that a person pardoned for an offense can no longer plead the Fifth on that offense. They cannot incriminate because they have already admitted guilt by accepting the pardon. But there could be cases in which a person who had committed no offense might want a pardon. But if someone is likely to be charged with an offense they did not commit, then it would be wise to accept a pardon.

As an authoritarian Trump sees Justice Department as his and as a tool to use against his enemies. This is consistent with his being a “law and order” President, since “law and order” is commonly used as a racist code for repression of minority communities. While Trump is perhaps not serious, he still calls for critics and former opponents to be locked up. It is likely that Trump believes that a future Democrat president will see the law as he sees it, as a weapon to be wielded and a tool to be exploited. As such, it makes sense for him to think that the Democrats might go after his family and associates without concern for the facts, since this is what he would do if he could get away with it. Trump could thus try to pardon people for crimes he claims they did not commit to protect them from vengeful prosecution. There are a few problems with this approach.

One problem is that the Democrats will probably not make up fake offenses to charge Trump’s family and associates with. Laying aside any claims about Democrats being committed to the rule of law, Democrats do not need to make up offenses. 

A second problem is that this line of reasoning falls apart. While Trump could issue pardons for any and all federal offenses said to have been committed prior to the pardon, he will lose his power to pardon when he is no longer President. If the Democrats were willing to just make up crimes, then they could just say the made-up crimes occurred after Trump’s pardon. They could also just make up state crimes. As such, Trump’s pardons only make sense if those pardoned committed the crimes and Trump believes that the Democrats will not just make up crimes.

A third problem is that the ruling is specific that the pardon must occur after the offense. If no offense was committed, then it cannot be pardoned. As such, Trump cannot claim that his family and associates committed no crimes while also pardoning them. Circling back, his family and associates would admit guilt by accepting the pardons and Trump could only pardon them if they committed the offenses. If they insist they committed no offenses, then they cannot accept the pardons, and Trump cannot grant them a pardon for an offense that did not occur.

If Trump states that they did not commit any offenses and issues pardons to pre-empt allegedly unjust investigations, then this could result in Supreme Court case. Trump being Trump, he might very well insist that those he pardons have committed no offenses, but he is pardoning them for these offenses.

 On the one hand, pardoning someone for an offense they did not commit would seem to be something the President cannot do: they can only pardon an offense after the offense has occurred. On the other hand, a ruling might allow this on the grounds that if the pardon does not hold, then the person could be convicted of the offense that they were pardoned for (even though they denied they committed it)—which would be an obvious problem. At the heart of this matter is whether the President can pardon something for an offense they did not commit—while the obvious answer would seem to be “no”, the law can be a strange thing.

Given that there are few restrictions on the pardon power, Trump could direct people to commit federal crimes with the promise of a pardon and then pardon them for those crimes. Given that the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are immune to criminal prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office and that the Republicans control congress, Trump is free to engage in federal crimes as he wishes and have others do so as well, without fear of any meaningful consequences.

To close, Trump could pardon everyone for every federal offense committed prior to his pardon. But he cannot pardon everyone for everything forever.

While I was required to take Epistemology in graduate school, I was not interested in the study of knowledge until I started teaching it. While remaining professionally neutral in the classroom, I now include a section on the ethics of belief in my epistemology class and discuss, in general terms, such things as tribal epistemology. Outside of the classroom I am free to discuss my own views on epistemology in the context of politics, and it is a fascinating subject. My younger self from graduate school would be surprised at the words “epistemology” and “fascinating” used together.

While COVID-19 was a nightmare for the world, the professed beliefs of Trump supporters about the pandemic provides an excellent case study in belief. As anyone familiar with these beliefs knows, they form a strange set of inconsistent and even contradictory claims. I am not claiming that every Trump supporter believes all these claims and I am not claiming that only Trump supporters believe them; but these are all claims professed by those who support Trump.

At the start of the pandemic Trump placed the blame on China and referred to the “the China virus.” His supporters generally accepted this view. The role of China varies depending on which explanation is offered. Some make the true claim that it originated in China. Others make the unsupported claim that it escaped (or was released intentionally) from a lab. On this view, the virus is generally presented as something bad. After all, it makes no sense to blame China unless the virus is a real problem.

There are also other conspiracy theories about the pandemic. One infamous theory is that the pandemic was real but caused by 5G. This would be inconsistent with the China virus theory; but one could preserve the China link by claiming that 5G technology is made in China

Trump also advanced the idea that the pandemic did not exist, that it was a hoax. This was echoed by his supporters—although some also advanced the theory that the Democrats infected Trump with the virus. The hoax idea was presented in various ways. For example, on some accounts the virus does exist but is no worse than the flu. This view led to an active anti-mask movement and death threats against public health experts. The anti-mask views make sense if one thinks the virus was a hoax but makes less sense if one thinks that the virus was bad enough to warrant making China pay. If it was a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats, then it makes no sense to hold China accountable. And if the virus did real damage and China should pay, then it makes no sense to claim it is a hoax. To be fair, these could be combined into the claim that China and the Democrats ran a worldwide hoax with the cooperation of all governments to harm Trump. Reconciling the 5G theory with the hoax theory would be challenging: if 5G was the cause of the pandemic, then it was not a hoax. And if it was a hoax, there was no pandemic for 5G to cause.

While Trump supporters profess to believe the pandemic was a hoax, over 80% of Republicans claimed to believe that Trump has done a great job with the pandemic.  His supporters claimed that he took rapid action (he did not) and that his response was very effective (it was not). Trump has also attempted to take credit for the forthcoming vaccines and has claimed, without evidence, that the FDA and Democrats stalled the vaccines. If the pandemic was a hoax, then it makes no sense to claim that Trump acted rapidly and effectively to counter the pandemic.  This is because there would be no pandemic to counter. It could be claimed that Trump acted to counter the hoax, but this would be hard to reconcile with Trump’s claims about the vaccine. If the pandemic was a hoax, then there was no need for a vaccine and taking credit for a useless vaccine would be silly. A Trump supporter could take the view that the pandemic was no worse than the flu and then credit Trump with addressing something no worse than the flu and developing the equivalent of a flu vaccine. But to the degree that Trump downplayed (lied about) the pandemic, this would undercut claims of how significant his alleged success should be considered.

As I noted earlier, I am not claiming that every Trump supporter believes all these claims. For example, the 5G pandemic theory was not universally embraced by Trump supporters (and is surely held by some who do not support him). However, Trump supporters generally seem to profess belief in many of these claims even though they are not consistent, and some would seem to lead to contradictions.

In logic, two claims are inconsistent when both could be false, but both cannot be true. To use my usual example, the claim that my water bottle contains only vodka and the claim that it contains only water are inconsistent with each other. If the bottle contains only vodka, then it does not contain only water and vice versa. But both could be false: the bottle could be empty. Or it could contain tequila. Many of the claims Trump supporters profess to believe about the pandemic seem inconsistent. For example, the claim that the pandemic was caused by 5G is not consistent with the claim that it is a hoax.

In logic, two claims contradict one another when one of them must be false and the other must be true. A contradiction is a claim that must be false and is false because of its logical structure. The stock example in logic is the conjunction P & -P. Since a conjunction is true when the two claims being conjoined are true and false otherwise, this claim is always false, at least on the assumption that any claim is true or false (but not both). So, if P is true, then -P must be false (and vice versa). Some of the claims Trump supporters profess to believe would seem to entail contradictory claims. For example, if it is claimed that the pandemic was caused by 5G, then this would entail that the pandemic is not a hoax which would contradict the claim that it is a hoax. Naturally, one could argue that the pandemic was caused by 5G and is also a hoax provided that the nature of the hoax is defined in a way that allows it to be caused by 5G.  As another example, the conspiracy theory that the pandemic was caused by a bioweapon released (intentionally or not) by China (or someone else) would entail that it was not a hoax. This would contradict the claim that it is a hoax. Again, one could try to craft the hoax claims in a way that the pandemic is both a hoax and caused by a bioweapon. Claiming that it is a hoax about a bioweapon would not do this, since a hoax about a bioweapon is not a bioweapon it is just a hoax.

From the standpoint of truth-functional logic (a logic in which the truth of a claim depends on the truth of the parts), the claims made by Trump supporters about the pandemic cannot all be true. In science-fiction, a robot or computer that attempted to accept all these claims would suffer some sci-fi logic failure, perhaps exploding. In reality, mapping out the logical relations between these claims would show that they cannot all be true and there would be no explosions (one hopes). But there is the interesting question of how people can hold to beliefs that cannot all be true and some of which lead to contradictions.

In philosophy, epistemologists (and others) often speak of beliefs as having intentionality. That is, beliefs have aboutness. When a person believes something about their world, they take their belief to correspond to reality. But while a belief has aboutness it need not be about reality. As an example, if Ted believes in unicorns, his belief is about unicorns (although philosophers disagree about beliefs about things that are not real) but not about real unicorns. Because there are no unicorns. People can also believe that all the claims in a set are true, even though it is not possible for them all to be true. That is, that set contains beliefs that are inconsistent with each other (or even contradictory). A person can even believe that a contradiction is true. Unlike truth functional logic, the truth of the claim “Person A believes claim C” does not depend on the truth of the parts; only on the truth of the claim about A believing C. A crude way to look at the matter is to see belief as like a Word file in which one can type any sentence rather than being like a computer program or circuit design that would fail if it contained logical inconsistencies or contradictions. So, saying that a person believes something is like saying it is in their Word file. Humans are clearly able to believe sets of inconsistent claims and even act on those beliefs which raises many interesting questions about belief formation and how belief impacts actions. As a closing point, people can certainly reconcile apparently inconsistent beliefs by not really believing in some or all of them professing that a claim is true when one believes it is not. That is, lying.

I, along with some other philosophers, was interviewed in 2016 about voting for an article by Olivia Goldhill of Quartz. While I still stand by what I said, interviews do have inherent problems. One common thing is the lack of depth. In some cases, this is due to the interview being short. For the Quartz piece, I spoke to the author for about five minutes. In other cases, the interview might be longer, but the content must be slashed down to fit in a limited amount of time or space. An interview I did about D&D and the real world was about thirty minutes long; but only about a minute was used in the broadcast. Another problem is that complex material aimed at the public must be simplified because most people are not experts. As such, I need to expand on my quote in the article.

After briefly discussing the difference between deontological and utilitarian approaches to voting, I presented my soundbite view of the issue:

 

 “As a citizen, I have a duty to others because it’s not just me and my principles, but everybody. I have to consider how what I do will impact other people. For example, if I was a die-hard Bernie supporter, I might say my principles tell me to vote for Bernie. But I’m not going to let my principles condemn other people to suffering.”

 

My position can be taken as either a deontological approach or a utilitarian approach. For the deontologist, an action is right or wrong in and of itself—the consequences are not what matter morally. For the utilitarian, the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. Looked at from a deontological perspective, acting on a duty to the general good would be the right thing to do. The fact that doing so would have good consequences is not what makes the action good. From the utilitarian perspective, the foundation of my duty would be utility: I should do what brings about the greatest good for the greatest number.

In 2016 I followed my principles. While I voted for Sanders in the primary and preferred him over Hillary, I thought that a Trump presidency would be much worse for the country than another Clinton presidency.  I saw her as competent business as usual politician. I predicted, correctly, that Trump would be bad for most Americans. I had the view in 2020 and 2024. When Trump runs in 2028, I’ll probably vote against him.  As such, I take the classic approach of choosing the lesser evil and the devil I know. If I was voting for the greater evil, Cthulhu would have my vote.

It might be objected that my approach is flawed. After all, if someone votes based on a rational assessment of the impact of an election on everyone, then she might vote against her own self-interest. What a person should do, it could be argued, is consider the matter selfishly and vote based on what is in her interest regardless of the general good.

This approach has considerable appeal and is based on an established moral philosophy which is ethical egoism. This is the view that a person should always take the action that maximizes her self-interest. Roughly put, for the ethical egoist, she is the only one with moral value. The opposing moral view is altruism; the view that other people count morally (to at least some degree). Ayn Rand is probably the best-known proponent of ethical egoism and the virtue of selfishness. This ideology was embraced by Paul Ryan and she was beloved by the American Tea Party before it was assimilated by MAGA.

While supporters of selfishness claim that the collective result of individual selfishness will be the general good (a view attributed to Adam Smith), history and reason show the opposite. Everyone being selfish has exactly the result one would suspect, and most people would be worse off than if people were more altruistic. To use an analogy, everyone being cruel does not make the world a kinder place. More people being kind makes kinder.

This is not to say that people should not consider their interests, just that they should also consider the interests of others. This is, after all, what makes civilization possible. Pure selfishness without regulation, as Hobbes argued, is the state of nature and the state of war and is not in anyone’s interest.

It can also be objected that my approach is flawed because it perpetuates the two-party lockdown of the American political system. While most people didn’t know this, there were many third party candidates running in 2016. Perhaps the best known was libertarian Gary Johnson. He received 1% of the popular vote in 2012 and managed to reach double digits in some polls. As he did not win, a vote for Johnson helped either Trump or Hillary get elected (depending on whether the person would have otherwise voted for one of them). Many claim that Nader’s ill-fated bid for president enabled Bush to win the election. While voting for a third-party candidate can be seen as, at best, throwing away one’s vote a case can be made for voting this way.

Like the approach I took in the interview, the argument for voting third party can be based on utilitarian considerations (one can also make a deontological argument based on the notion of a duty to vote one’s conscience). The difference is that the vote for the third party would be justified by the hope of long-term consequences. To be specific, the justification would be that voting for a third-party candidate could allow the greater evil to win this election. And the next election. And probably several more elections after that. But, eventually, the lockdown on politics by Democrats and Republicans could be broken by a viable third party. If the third party is likely to be better than the Democrats or Republicans, then this could be a good utilitarian argument.  It could also be a good argument if having a viable third party merely improved things for the population. The deciding factor would be whether the positive consequences of eventually getting a viable third party would be worth the cost of getting there. Naturally, the likelihood of viability is also a factor.

I am still split on this issue, though Trump’s two victories have pushed me towards favoring voting for the lesser evil. On the one hand, there seems to be a good reason to stick with voting for the lesser evil, namely the fact that third party viability is a gamble. There is also concern about whether any third-party candidate is better than the lesser evil. On the other hand, voting for the lesser evil does lock us in a two-party system and this could prove more damaging than allowing the greater evil to win numerous times on the way towards having a viable third party.

The student loan crisis occasionally gets attention in the media, but the coverage is often quick and shallow. Back in 2016 James B. Steele and Lance Williams of Reveal from the The Center for Investigative Reporting presented a more in-depth examination of the student loan industry. As a former student and current professor, I am concerned about student loans.

The original intention of student loans, broadly construed, was to provide lower income students with an affordable means of paying for college. Like most students, I had to take out loans to pay for school. This was back in the 1980s, when college costs were more reasonable and just as student loans were being transformed into a massive for-profit industry. As such, my loans were modest (about $8,000) and I was able to pay them off even on the pitiful salary I was earning as an adjunct professor. Times have, however, changed for the worse. And it just keeps getting worse under Republican rule for the rich, by the rich and against the poor.

Making a long story short, the federal government enabled banks and private equity companies to monetize the federal student loan program, allowing them to profit from the loans and fees. Because many state governments embraced an ideology of selfishness and opposition to the public good, they significantly cut their support for state colleges and universities, thus increasing the cost of tuition. At the same time, university administrations were growing both in terms of number of administrators and the size of salaries, thus increasing costs as well. There was also an increase in infrastructure costs due to new technology as well as a desire to market campuses as having amenities such as rock-climbing gyms. The result was $1.3 trillion in debt for 42 million Americans and this just keeps increasing. On the “positive” side, the government makes about 20% on its 2013 loans and the industry was humming along at $140 billion a year.

While the government held about 93% of the total debt, the debt collection was contracted to private companies and these were scooped up by the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. As expected, these contractors make large profits (about $2 billion per year back in 2016). The collection process is often very aggressive, and the industry has used its control over congress to ensure favorable laws. For example, student loan debt is one of the very few debts that are not discharged by bankruptcy.

While student loans were originally intended to benefit students, they now benefit the government and the private contractors to the detriment of students. As such, there is a moral concern here in addition to the practical concerns about loans.

If the primary purpose of student loans is to address economic inequality by assisting lower income students attend college, then its current state goes against this purpose. This is because the system is creates massive debt for students while creating massive profits for the state and private contractors. That is, students are being exploited by both the state and the private sector. The collusion of the state makes seeking redress rather difficult. After all, the people need to turn to the state for redress, yet the state is an interested party and under the influence of industry. This problem is, of course, not unique to student loans and it is one more example of how privatization is great for the private sector rich but often awful for citizens.

It could be argued that the proper function of the state is to serve the interest of the financial elites at the expense of the citizens. If so, then the student loan program should continue as it is; it is great for the state and the financial class while crushing citizens under mountains of debt. If, however, the state should serve the good of the citizens in general, then the status quo is a disaster. My view is, not surprisingly, that of John Locke: the state is to serve the good of the people. As such,  the student loan industry needs to be changed.

One change that would help is for states to return to supporting public higher education. While there are legitimate concerns about budgets, education is a great investment in both the private good of the students and the public good. After all, civilization needs educated people to function and people with college degrees end up with higher incomes and thus pay more taxes (paying back the investment many times over). While there are professed ideological reasons for opposing this, there are also financial motivations: dismantling public education would push more students into the awful for-profit schools that devour money and excrete un(der)employed people burdened by massive debt. While this is great for the owners of these schools, it is awful for the students and society.

Another change, which has been proposed by others, is to change or end the privatized aspects of the system. While there is the myth that the private sector is vastly superior to the inefficient and incompetent state, the fact is that the efficiency of the private sector seems to mostly lie in making a profit for itself rather than running the student loan system in accord with its intended purpose. This is not to say that the state must be great in what it does, just that cutting out the large profits of the collection agencies would reduce the burden on students. This is, of course, a moral question about whether it is right or not to profit on the backs of students.

There has also been talk about reducing the interest rates of student loans and even proposals for free college. I do favor lower interest rates; if the purpose of the loans is to assist students rather than make money, then lower interest rates would be the right thing to do. As far as free college goes, there is the obvious problem that “free” college must be paid for by someone and it is a matter of shifting the burden from students to someone else. The ethics of such a shift depends on who is picking up the tab.

As a closing point, there is also the matter of student responsibility. My loans went entirely to paying education expenses, which is one reason my debt was low even for the time. While many students do use loans wisely, my experiences as a student and a professor have shown that some students use loan money unwisely and put themselves into debt for things that have no connection to education. For example, faculty sometimes joke that while administrators drive the most expensive cars, students drive the second most expensive and most faculty drive the worst. Students that overburden themselves with loans they use irresponsibly have only themselves to blame. However, the fact that a few students do this does not invalidate the claim that much of the debt burden inflicted on students is unjust.  We should, as always, be wary of attempts to demonize people based on anecdotal evidence and straw person attacks.

 

Peaceful protest is an integral part of America. As is murder. Back in 2016 the two collided in Dallas, Texas: after a peaceful protest, five police officers were murdered. While some might see it as ironic that police rushed to protect people protesting police violence, this reminds us about how police are supposed to function in a democratic society. This stands in stark contrast with the unnecessary deaths inflicted on citizens by bad officers, deaths that once caused the nations to briefly consider that such deaths might be worth preventing.

While violence and protests are worthy of in-depth discussion, my focus will be on the ethical questions raised by the use of a robot to deliver the explosive device was used to kill one of the attackers. While this matter was addressed by philosophers more famous than I, I thought it worthwhile to look back to 2016 to see if my thoughts have changed.

While the police robot is called a robot, it is more accurate to say it is a remotely operated vehicle. After all, the term “robot” implies some autonomy on the part of the machine. The police robot is remote controlled, like a sophisticated version of RC toys. In fact,  one could do the same thing  by putting an explosive on a toy.

Since there is a human operator directly controlling the machine, the ethics of the matter are the same ass if  conventional machines of death (such as a gun) had been used to kill the shooter. On the face of it, the only difference is in perception: a killer robot delivering a bomb sounds more ominous and controversial than an officer using a firearm. The use of remote-controlled vehicles to kill targets was nothing new as the basic technology has been around since at least WWII and the United States has killed many people with drones.

If this had been the first case of an autonomous police robot sent to kill (like an ED-209), then the issue would be different. However, it is a case that falls under established ethics of killing, only with a slight twist in regards to the delivery system. That said, it can be argued that the use of a remote-controlled machine is a morally relevant change.

Keith Abney raised a very reasonable point: if a robot could be sent to kill a target, it could also be sent to use non-lethal force to subdue the target. In the case of human officers, the usual moral justification of lethal force is that it is the best option for protecting themselves and others from a threat. If the threat presented by a suspect can be effectively addressed in a non-lethal manner, then that is the option that should be used. The moral foundation for this is set by the role of police in society: they are supposed to protect the public and should take every legitimate effort to deliver suspects for trial. They are not supposed to function as soldiers sent to defeat enemies. There are, of course, cases in which suspects cannot be safely captured and lethal force can be justified. A robot (or, more accurately, a remote-controlled machine) can radically change the equation.

While a police robot is an expensive piece of hardware, it is not a human being (or even an artificial being). As such, it only has the moral status of property. In contrast, even the worst human criminal is a human being and thus has a moral status above that of an object. If a robot is sent to engage a human suspect, then in many circumstances there would be no moral justification for using lethal force. After all, the officer operating the machine is in no danger. This should change the ethics of the use of force to match other cases in which a suspect needs to be subdued but presents no danger to the officer attempting arrest. In such cases, the machine should be outfitted with less-than-lethal options.

While television and movies make subduing someone safely seem easy, it is difficult to do. For example, the classic rifle butt to the head is a fictional favorite for knocking someone out, when doing that in the real world would cause serious injury or even death. Tasers, gas weapons and rubber bullets also can cause serious injury or death. However, the less-than-lethal options are less likely to kill a suspect and thus allow them to be captured for trial, which is supposed to be the point of law enforcement. Robots could be designed to both withstand gunfire and securely grab a suspect. While this is likely to result in injury (such as broken bones) and could kill, it would be less likely to kill than a bomb. An excellent example of a situation in which a robot would be ideal would be to capture an armed suspect barricaded in a structure.

It must be noted that there will be cases in which the use of lethal force via a robot is justified. These would include cases in which the suspect presents a clear and present danger to officers or civilians and the best chance of ending the threat is the use of such force. An example of this might be a hostage situation in which the hostage taker is likely to kill hostages while the robot is trying to subdue them with less-than-lethal force.

While police robots have long been the stuff of science fiction, they do present a potential technological solution to the moral and practical problem of keeping officers and suspects alive. While an officer might be legitimately reluctant to stake her life on less-than-lethal options when directly engaged with a suspect, an officer operating a robot faces no such risk. As such, if the deployment of less-than-lethal options via a robot would not put the public at unnecessary risk, then it would be morally right to use such means.

Put a bit simply, a silencer is a device for suppressing the sound a gun makes when it fires. This is usually done to avoid drawing attention to the shooter. This makes an excellent analogy for what happens to proposals for gun regulation: the sound is quickly suppressed to ensure that it does not get too much attention.

Part of this suppression is deliberate. After each mass shooting, the NRA and similar groups step up pressure on their politicians to ensure new regulations are delayed, defeated or defanged. While it is tempting to cast the NRA as a nefarious player subverting democracy, the NRA seems to have mastered the democratic process: it organizes and guides motivated citizens to give money (which is used to lobby politicians) and to contact their representatives. This has often proven more effective than protests, sit-ins and drum circles. While it is true that the NRA represents only a fraction of the population, politics is like any sport: you must participate to win. While many citizens do not even bother to vote, NRA member turnout is apparently quite good. This is, of course, democracy. Naturally, another tale could be told of the NRA and its power and influence. A tale that presents the NRA and its members as subverting the will of the majority.

Certain pundits and politicians also engage in suppression. One standard tactic is, after a shooting, to claim that it is “too soon” to engage in discussion and lawmaking. Rather, the appropriate response involves thoughts and prayers. While it is appropriate to pay respects to the wounded and dead, there is a difference between doing this and trying to run out the clock with this delaying tactic. Those that use it know that if the discussion can be delayed, interest will fade and along with it the chances of any action being taken.

It is, in fact, appropriate to act as soon as possible. To use the obvious analogy, if a fire is ravaging through a neighborhood, then the time to put out that fire is now. This way there will be less need for moments of thoughts and prayers for victims.

Another stock tactic is to accuse those proposing gun regulation of playing politics and exploiting the tragedy to advance their agenda. This approach can have some moral merit; if a person is engaged in a Machiavellian exploitation of some awful event (be it a mass shooting, a terrorist attack, or a migrant committing murder) without real concern for others, then that person would be morally awful. That said, they could still be acting rightly, albeit for all the wrong reasons. This would be in terms of the consequences, which could be good despite the immoral motivation. For example, if a politician cynically exploited the harm inflicted by lead contaminated water to gain national attention so they could gain power and money, then that person would not be a good person. However, if this resulted in changes that reduced lead poisoning in the United States, then consequences would be good and desirable.

It is also worth considering that using an awful event to motivate change for the better could result from laudable motives and a recognition of how human psychology works. To use an analogy, a person who loves someone who just suffered from a lifestyle inflicted heart attack could use that event to get the person to change her lifestyle and do so for commendable reasons. After all, people are most likely to do something when an awful event is fresh in their minds; hence this is the ideal time to address a problem, which leads to the final part of the discussion.

Although active suppression can be an effective tactic, it often relies on the fact that interest in a matter fades as time passes. This is why those opposed to new gun regulation use delaying tactics. They know that public attention will shift and fade.

On the one hand, the human tendency to lose interest can be regarded as a bad thing. As Merlin said in Excalibur, “for it is the doom of men that they forget.” In the case of mass shootings and gun violence, people quickly forget an incident until the next mass shooting reminds them. This allows a problem to persist and is why action needs to be taken as soon as possible.

On the other hand, our forgetting is often our salvation. If the memory of fear and pain did not fade over time, they would be wounds that did not heal. Just as a person would bleed to death physically from wounds that never healed, a person would bleed out emotionally if memory did not fade.

To use another analogy, if the mind is like a ship and memory is like a cargo, just as a ship that could never lighten its load would plunge to the ocean floor, a person that could never lighten her emotional load would be dragged into the great abyss of emotions and thus be ruined. Thus, forgetting is both our doom and our salvation. Of course, we would have far less need to forget if we remembered what we need to fix. And fixed it.

 

Judging from the news coverage, it would be natural to think that mass shootings with assault rifles are the most common form of gun violence. As is often the case, the extent of media coverage is no indicator of the facts of the matter and to think otherwise would be to fall victim to the spotlight fallacy. While mass shootings are all too common, the number of people killed per year in such events is only a small fraction of deaths involving guns. Most gun deaths are self-inflicted: 21,334 of the 33,599 known gun deaths in 2014 were suicides. Of the remaining deaths, homicides accounted for 10,945, accidents 586 and police interventions resulted in 464 deaths. The death tolls in these three categories have been stable since 2000, but gun suicides increased significantly during this time. As should be expected, there have been various attempts to address this problem.

When attempts to prevent suicide focus on guns, a common counter is to repeat the saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Put in non-slogan form, the argument is that there is no reason to focus on guns because doing so will have no significant impact on suicide rates. Those who are intent on killing themselves will find some other means of doing so, such as overdosing. This is analogous to the response to other proposals to address gun violence. For example, when gun regulation is raised as a means of addressing mass shootings, one response is that people will simply use something else, such as homemade bombs or their car.

This counter can be addressed by considering some key facts about guns and suicide. The first is that research indicates that a person will typically start planning a very short time before the attempt (often less than an hour). That is, there is usually a limited window of vulnerability. The second, and the most relevant, is that guns are very effective suicide machines: 85% of suicide attempts with guns succeed, followed by 69% for hanging. The use of poison succeeds 2% of the time. This is hardly surprising: guns are designed to kill effectively and quickly. At this point, an objector might contend that the effectiveness of guns is not relevant since a person will just keep trying if they fail with a low success method. This leads to the third fact.

While it seems reasonable to believe that a person who tries to commit suicide and fails will keep trying, the evidence seems to show that most people who fail do not try again. As such, if the first attempt fails, there probably will not be another, especially if there is an intervention. As such, if a suicidal person did not have access to a gun, then his chance of not dying would be significantly better than if he did. This is not to ignore the other means of committing suicide; it is merely to consider the facts of the success rate.

While a lack of access to a gun would significantly reduce the chances a person will succeed in a suicide attempt, there is the problem of making this a reality. Some countries have addressed gun violence by strong restrictions on gun ownership, thus reducing all forms of gun violence (including suicide). As a matter of political reality, this is not an option in the United States. As such, the challenge of suicide by gun must be addressed in other ways.

One approach, which is analogous to one of many proposals for addressing mass shootings, is a requirement to confirm the mental health of a person purchasing a gun. In the case of suicide prevention, the mental health issues of concern would tend to be different from those involved with mass shootings or other forms of gun violence. Though this is reasonable, it does have two significant gaps. The first is that it does nothing about guns that are already owned. The second is that it requires that the person has an established history that would indicate a likely attempt at suicide.

In regards to guns already owned, the main solution is for the guns to be made inaccessible to the person. This could be done by the person themselves, by friends/relatives or by the authorities. The main problem is that suicide, as noted above, tends to not be planned well in advance and so there may be little or no time for an intervention. There are also legal and practical challenges in taking a person’s guns away without their consent. If the person has proven themselves a danger to themselves (or others), then there are procedures for this. However, if a person is merely suspected of having the potential of committing suicide, there is the problem of justifying taking the person’s guns. Given that gun ownership is taken as a constitutional right, the authorities would have no legal right to take away a person’s guns without adequate justification. Friends and relatives, of course, would not need legal justification to intervene but taking a person’s guns without his consent would be theft (not to mention the potential risk). This is analogous to attempts to prevent mass shootings by taking away guns from people who might engage in such behavior, the problem is that until they act or make clear threats, there is little legal basis for such action.

In regards to the established and known history of mental illness, the problem (as with the case of some mass shootings) is that before a person acts, her background is very often the same as people who will never engage in gun violence. This is the general problem of prediction. There are also the ethical and legal problems associated with acting on mere predictions. This is because gun ownership is a legal right in the United States as well as the usual moral arguments in favor of gun ownership as a moral right.

There do not seem to be many technological options to address the use of guns in suicide. After all, the requirement of a safety feature that prevents a gun from being fired at humans would never pass in the United States, even if such a feature was a technical possibility. A feature that prevented a weapon from firing at designated person (such as the owner) might have some appeal (and is a feature of some science fiction weapons) but even if it were possible, a person could bypass this feature or get another weapon. The solution, obviously enough, must be a human one.

Like everyone else, how I look at the world is shaped by my backstory. While, as a professional philosopher, I have an excellent logical toolkit, my use of these tools is shaped by how I feel about things. Since the matter of guns is an emotional issue, I need to sort out how my backstory influences how I assess arguments about guns.

Academics, especially philosophers, are often cast as latte sipping effeminate liberals who would get the vapors if they so much as caught sight of a gun. The positive version of this stereotype is that an academic is far too civil to have any truck with something as barbarous as guns and far too intelligent to believe that guns have any value. A true intellectual, or so the stereotype goes, should dismiss all pro-gun prattle with the wave of a hand, a bemused smile and a remark about people clinging to God and guns. This slides nicely into a rather negative stereotype of gun owners.

Gun owners are all too often stereotyped as slack jawed ignoramuses, upper lips sweaty with thoughts of killing God’s creatures and who secretly stroke their shooting irons while fantasizing about killing. The positive reverse of this negative stereotype is that gun owners are practical folks who believe in God, guns and country and want nothing to do with those ivory tower intellectuals and their bemused smiles.

Being a gun-toting philosopher, I have been subject to these stereotypes. If an academic colleague or a fellow intellectual learns that I am a gun person (and especially that I have hunted), they often react with shock and dismay. Surely, they say, I am too smart and too decent to have anything to do with guns. Once they get to know me, they tend to look at my gun history as a small aberration in an otherwise decent person.

Gun folks who find out I am an academic are often surprised by this, especially when they learn I am a philosopher. They often think of academics as elitist liberals who swoon at the sight of guns. Once they get to know me, they tend to look at my being a philosopher as a small aberration in an otherwise decent person. As is true of everyone else, I am who I am today because of who I was. So, on to my gun related backstory.

Like many American boys of my time, my first gun was a BB gun. It was a Daisy BB gun, but not a Red Ryder. It would, however, put an eye out. As boys, we would shoot the hell out of each other with our guns, so it is a wonder that we all made it out of childhood with both eyes. This was the gun I used for my first kill.

 While the mists of time have obscured many memories, I clearly recall taking aim at a songbird perched on a powerline by what we called “the frog pond.” Carelessly I shot, not thinking I would hit it. The bird fell, striking the ground as a corpse. Though I was a kid, I knew I had done something terrible and had committed a needless, senseless killing. I had murdered that bird. I was not protecting myself (obviously) and I did not need it for food. That callous and careless murder shaped my view of guns for the rest of my life. My young mind grasped that it is all too easy to silence a song forever.

Eventually I got my first real guns, a Marlin .22 and a single shot .410-gauge shotgun. I still have them back home in Maine. My father made sure that I knew all the safety rules and he taught me two of the great truths about guns. The first is that a gun is always loaded. The second is that you never point a gun at anything or anyone unless you mean to kill. The safety lessons stuck and  I have never been injured by my own gun and I have never harmed another being without intending to do so.

Once I was old enough, I went hunting with my father. I had to get up at an ungodly hour of the day and I remember feeling very cold. We’d then drive down to the land we owned in Lamoine. On the way we’d get Dunkin Donuts which was my favorite part. Sometimes we would cook bacon and eggs by the ocean. Sometimes we would  go down the night before and that meant Dinty Moore Beef Stew from the can. These are all positive memories—no one got hurt. Well, no one but the ducks. Although I make really good beef stew these days, I still buy a can of Dinty Moore from time to time. It tastes like memories.

While hunters are sometimes cast as bloodthirsty, callous or trophy lusting egomaniacs, nothing could be further from my experiences. My father taught me to respect the animals we hunted and the natural world. He also taught me a lesson that has shaped my character ever since.

While a duck usually drops immediately when hit, sometimes they are only badly wounded. These birds are sometimes able to fly away before being forced down. They are, no doubt, terrified and in great pain while they struggle to escape. While it might be thought that the right thing to do would be to let such a bird escape, the truth is that it will most likely suffer from an infection and die horribly and slowly. Once, when we were hunting, this happened, the bird flew quite a distance and then plummeted into the water, wounded but not dead. My father got the boat into the water and went after the duck, shooting it and retrieving it. The reason was not to avoid losing the duck. The reason was a moral responsibility to that duck. To leave it to suffer and die would be wrong; the duck was his responsibility. This reinforced my belief in the responsibility that comes from using a gun and the moral necessity of being fully accountable for one’s actions. We are dangerous beings, and we are accountable to those we harm.

Some might say that this tale is all well and good, but that the real lesson is that a person should not be out there shooting animals in the first place. As a philosopher, I agree there are excellent moral arguments against harming animals (I have, of course, read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and this is why I no longer eat veal). However, to hunt for the sake of food and to do so with respect for the animal is to accept that I am part of the natural world. That is, I am a hunter and the duck is prey. Someday, I too shall pass, and my mortal shell will be consumed. As I see it, it is morally acceptable to kill a duck for food, provided that the kill is clean.

Those who embrace vegetarianism can raise very reasonable moral objections against killing even for food: why kill an animal that can suffer instead of eating a plant that (supposedly) cannot? I do find merit in these arguments and accept that killing animals for food is morally worse than killing plants. However, I accept the moral weight of my actions, and this makes me reluctant to kill. In fact, I would now only kill for my own survival.

When I went to college and then to graduate school, I learned a great deal about ethics. It is, in fact, a subject I teach. Interestingly, what I learned about ethics did not radically change my views of guns (or hunting). Mainly it gave me a better theoretical framework in which to discuss the issues.

While I do not hunt like I used to, I still engage in target shooting with friends. We go to a gun range, follow all the safety protocols (and watch out for the fools who do not) and usually get lunch afterwards. We get, I think, the same enjoyment from this that people get from playing golf. While there is some risk of injury, that is true of many activities—so I have never regarded target shooting as immoral.

While assault rifles are usually the focus of the media, there is also concealed carry. Some states allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon while others require a license. When I got my first permit in Maine, the process was easy and was handled by the local police. When I got my permit in Florida, I had to take a safety course (which was easy, since I had been shooting for almost 40 years) and pass a thorough background check.

When I was in Maine, I had the permit mainly as a matter of convenience, so I could carry my .357 under my jacket while hunting. It was a backup in case my rifle malfunctioned, and I had to finish off a wounded deer. A fellow I know once had to finish off a deer with a small knife, which was horrifying. . I got the permit in Florida mainly for convenience in taking a gun to the range and to be legally safe in regard to carrying a knife. Being from Maine, I always have a knife.

Some people get permits because of fear of being attacked. While I am aware that this could happen, I am not particularly afraid that I will be attacked since I understand how statistics work. I also understand how being afraid creates more danger and a person whose mind is shaped by fear is more likely to overreact violently. I practice casual alertness: I know that some people I encounter will be friendly, the vast majority will be neutral and the odds of encountering an attacker are incredibly low. But it is unwise to be unaware. I have been in a few situations that could have gone very badly, but my preferred resolution is talking and that has worked so far.

I do, however, believe that a person has a moral obligation to be capable of self-defense. To expect others to bear the burden of defense is moral selfishness, worse than expecting someone else to do one’s cooking and cleaning. After all, defending a person can result in death. Naturally, I do accept that the helpless and those who are less capable should be protected; but being willfully helpless is a moral failing. I am not, however, claiming that everyone should get a gun. A gun is a great responsibility and should, as a matter of ethics, only be entrusted with those of the right character who are willing to learn to use the weapon properly and responsibly. I think the same way about all dangerous machines, including automobiles and computers. While there is the right to be armed, not everyone is up to exercising that right properly. This is, of course, distinct from the legality of the matter. To use an analogy, I think there are people who should not have children because they are awful parents. However, they have every legal right to do so, until they cross certain boundaries. The same applies to guns.

That, then, is my gun backstory that shapes the lens through which I see gun issues. Naturally, I expect people to have moral criticisms of my backstory as well as the position I take as the result of reasoning colored by this backstory. But those who disagree with me should consider their own backstories and how they impact their views. As should those who agree with me.