The Crusaders Were Nuts Too

Although they certainly didn't slaughter any Protestants, since they had not been invented yet, the Crusaders were known to massacre their fellow Christians on occasion, I suppose for practice. It was a long trip to the Holy Land, and they had to do something to keep in shape so they could properly deal with the infidels when they finally got there. In his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Edward Gibbon asserted that the Crusades were the best thing that ever happened to Europe because they got rid of a lot of violent people, leaving their homeland in the hands of farmers and tradesmen.

I did so read that article on the defunding of gun violence research. It was not clear to me, however, exactly what kinds of research had been going on. I speculated that it might have been more directed towards anti gun legislation than it was towards examining the criminal mind. I didn't know that for sure, but I figured that might have been the reason for defunding the program, since Republicans were in control of Congress at the time. I also read Old Dog's link about the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. While I found it interesting, I would be more interested in a study of the psychological difference between mass murderers and nice guys like us. I found the article on the Reputation Economy less interesting because it seemed to pertain mostly to businessmen and white collar workers, neither of which I have ever been.

The Second Amendment, like a lot of the Constitution, is vague and imprecise, providing job security for generations of judges and lawyers. There was some speculation, when Obama was first elected, that he would try to make ammunition either unavailable or unaffordable. This led to a lot of over buying and hoarding of the stuff, to the point that certain types of ammo were getting hard to find. For some reason the most scarce of them all was .22 caliber rim fire, a round that is not commonly used in combat or personal defense. I have read articles in the past, however, that said the .22 comes highly recommended for wilderness survival situations and post apocalyptic scenarios. Maybe the paranoid types were worried about losing more than their gun rights.