It’s important to remember that America exists as a nation only because its citizens were able to take up arms against a repressive government and win their freedom. Its founding fathers, quite rightfully, knew that the only true way for a populace to remain free from oppressors is for that populace to have the ability to fight back against oppressors. This bedrock principle is enshrined in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

That being said, the debate over gun control has been warped by Republican rhetoric for a long time now.

The 2nd Amendment reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” When gun-control comes up, the NRA screech that the 2nd Amendment shall know no limits. The gun-control advocates have never effectively countered this rhetoric, which is relatively easy to do:

D: Do you think that your neighbor should be able to mount a howitzer in his front yard?

R: No.

D: Then we both agree there should be gun-control. So the question is, where are we going to draw the line? Howitzers? Machine guns? Sub-machine guns? Assault rifles?

If they’re actually nuts enough to say that suburbia should be studded with howitzers, raise the stakes:

D: So do you think that your neighbor should be allowed to build a nuclear bomb in their basement?

R: No.

D: Then we both agree that there should be arms-control. So the question is, where are we going to draw the line? Nuclear weapons? Plastique? Howitzers? Machine guns? Sub-machine guns? Assault rifles?

If they’re actually nuts enough to say that nuclear weapons should be available to every Tom, Dick, and Jane, then they’ve lost all credibility in the debate.

The trick is to get this debate onto the level of yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. Only loonies believe that freedom of speech should allow people to deliberately create false panic, engage in criminal conspiracies, or perjure themselves under legal oath.

Similarly, only loonies believe that a right to bear arms should allow people unrestricted and unregulated access to nuclear weapons, plastic explosives, or biological weapons.

The legitimate debate, in both cases, comes down to: Where do we want to draw the line?

Right now, it’s impossible to have that debate because the issue is systematically reduced to extremist rhetoric. But with a little Socratic dialoguing and a handful of questions you can quickly and effectively strip away that rhetoric.

Once you’ve done that, you can start talking about the issue rationally. Here are some good questions that get to the heart of the issue:

1. What weapons should private citizens be prohibited from possessing under any circumstances?

2. What weapons should private citizens be allowed to possess only under strict regulations and controls?

3. What weapons should private citizens be allowed to possess only after being properly trained and licensed?

4. What weapons should private citizens have a right to own without limitation?

Another minor update: With the announcement of 4th Edition, I’ve decided to set aside further development work on the advanced Diplomacy rules I was working on. I may, or may not, return to these when I pick up development on Rule Supplement 4: Advanced Skills. If I do, they’ll be posted here.

For the moment, however, I have gathered together the design notes and the final fix for the Diplomacy skill in the Advanced Rules section of the Creations page. As with my the other Advanced Rules, these rules have been placed under the OGL.

Enjoy!

Well, it took about five more hours than I really wanted it to, but I finally managed to wrestle DriveThru and Lulu into submission. It looks like they’ll behave themselves now as far as Mythos Audio Library: Call of Cthulhu is concerned. You can now purchase a version of the audio book in MP3 and listen to a sample.

After many travails, I have finally managed to get Mythos Audio Library: Call of Cthulhu published through CafePress as an audiobook on CD. I’m hoping to have MP3 files available for purchase shortly, but I’m running into delays trying to get the files uploaded to both DriveThru and Lulu. I’ll post an announcement here as soon as that happens.

The delay in getting the MP3 files up is also delaying my ability to get a direct download link to a sample of the audiobook. But if you click through to CafePress, they have several samples available for you to listen to.

THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE,
AND WITH STRANGE AEONS EVEN DEATH MAY DIE…

On February 28th, 1925, a terrible cataclysm wracked the Pacific Ocean. On March 22nd of the same year, the world nearly came to an end.

But humanity lived through it all on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity. And perhaps it was merciful that it should be so, for if those who had in their possession the disparate clues which might have pieced out the truth of it had ever had a chance to compare notes a true panic would have broken loose.

Such secrets should remain buried… and more than buried.

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

Buy CD – Buy MP3
72 minutes – Sample Audio

“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival… a survival of a hugely remote period when… consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity… forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds…”

– Algernon Blackwood

This is a documentary that you should see. That everyone should see.

I’ve been concerned for years by the apparent over-prescription of mood-altering drugs in our modern society. Watching just the first five minutes of this documentary has raised that from a mild concern to a serious concern. We are living in a society where entire families live in a drug-induced fiction; where sadness is combatted as if it were an abnormal lesion upon the brain; and children who don’t behave like miniature adults are sedated until they become good little citizens.

And why is this happening? Because we’re lazy. Because society wants us to be sheep. And because the drug companies benefit by creating life-long customers of their drugs.

It is easy to simply blame the parents here. But, increasingly, we’re seeing schools and government organizations working hand-in-hand to force unwilling parents to put their “disorderly” children onto drugs. (Is it truly coincidental that the number of children supposedly suffering from ADD/ADHD suddenly shot through the roof just as schools were given more money based on the number of ADD/ADHD students they had?)

But what is truly disturbing is that this Ritalin obsession is that it’s masking the actual source of the problem, rather than correcting it: Precocious children are bored in school; the solution is not to drug them, but to challenge them. Children are suffering from allergic reactions or lead poisoning or PCB exposure; the solution is to treat the actual medical condition, not drug them into submission. Children are over-stimulated by television or hyperactive on excess sugar. The list goes on and on.

Is there an underlying condition of ADD/ADHD that some exceptionally small percentage of our society suffers from and which can be successfully treated with Ritalin and similar drugs? Yes.

Is there an underlying condition of chemically-induced depression that some exceptionally small percentage of our society suffers from and which can be successfully treated with anti-depressants? Yes.

But 10% of boys from age 6 to 12 are now taking psychotropic medication. We, as a society, are becoming as warped as 19th-century China with its opiates. Our behavior is being shaped by drugs instead of brains. And if we allow this trend to continue, we will destroy ourselves.