Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (147310)	11/16/2005 9:28:41 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793890

So one or two lives no longer count. Karen, we're not measuring our outrage at evil doers here, we're getting a meaningful handle on an English expression. Of course one or two lives count. They just don't qualify as "mass destruction." If a couple of people die in a car crash when the brakes fail, do you think of a car as a weapon of mass destruction? Of course you don't. Tens of thousands of people are killed each year by handguns. Is a handgun a weapon of mass destruction? Not hardly. It would be ironic if it were because there was some argument on this thread in the last day or so that individuals have a constitutional right to this weapon of mass destruction. So get your outrage under control and think about what "mass destruction" really means. And what, therefore, a weapon of mass destruction is. Mass destruction is that earthquake that hit Pakistan, not a couple of guys who die when a roller coaster or a disgruntled employee goes bonkers. To be a weapon of mass destruction it has to be more fatal than conventional weapons, seems to me. If a conventional bomb can kill a couple of thousand people, then a weapon of mass destruction has to be bigger and badder than that. The bomb that dropped on Hiroshima was clearly a weapon of mass destruction. So the threshold in number of deaths per incident would have to be somewhere between the biggest conventional bomb and Hiroshima. You might want to define WMD territory as low as a few thousand. I think that's a reasonable difference of opinion. I picked ten thousand. Like I said, your mileage may vary, but I don't think you can make a logical case for a threshold lower than a few thousand. And you sure can't make it for one or two.