February Meeting:
“Basic Firearms: Nomenclature, Ballistics, Laws, and the Assault
Rifle Controversy”
Our next meeting on Saturday, February 17, will be an
evening of education about guns and gun laws. Rich Aldridge will present
“Basic Firearms: Nomenclature, Ballistics, Laws, and the Assault Rifle
Controversy.” He will discuss the different types of firearms and
ammunition, for the benefit of those who haven’t had exposure to them.
He will also talk about the field of ballistics with various types of
ammunition. Rich will then point out fallacies in the controversy over
banning assault weapons.
You’ll want to make sure
to join us for the informative meeting on Saturday, February 17, at 8
p.m., at the home of Joy & Jeff Kiviat. Call (314) 469-2723 for
directions. The presentation will be followed by plenty of snacks and
discussion.
Judge, Jury and Entertainment
At our last meeting, we played “Judge for
Yourself – The Game of Real Life Courtroom Dramas.” The game involved
real life court cases where we acted as jurors, deciding whether the
actual jury found for or against the plaintiffs. Congratulations go to
Rich Aldridge who won by getting the verdict correct on every case.
While we enjoyed playing
the game, many were disappointed that the cases were not more clearly or
extensively explained, making it hard to decide on the verdict. We did
discuss each case and the merits of for or against verdicts, and tried to
look at them from an objective law viewpoint.
With some effort on the
part of GO’s members, we hope to have another game night soon – an
Objectivist version of Trivial Pursuit. Please contact us at gwobjctvst@aol.com
if you know of Objectivist trivia questions that are already written.
Stossel v. U.S. Government
John Stossel gave us another poignant prime time special on ABC on January
27. “John Stossel Goes to Washington” looked at the waste and
destruction of some government programs and what the role of the
government should be.
Tibor Machan was featured as an expert on what is
wrong with the tax-and-spend government and what the founding fathers
believed were the only proper functions of government. Rep. Ron Paul
talked about why he votes against any bill that violates those proper
functions.
Stossel used examples such as public housing, air
traffic control and the welfare of American Indians to show what has gone
wrong when the government is in control, and how much better and less
expensive services can be when done by the private sector. Stossel
scheduled an interview with then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt
to find out about millions of dollars missing that were intended for
American Indian programs. After 30 seconds, Babbitt stood up, muttered,
“I’m gonna fire whoever scheduled this interview,” and walked out.
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