10-19-2022, 08:56 PM
For many good reasons I would prefer a dog as a defense. Even scarier than a burglar is fire, and a dog is likely to smell smoke than you are. Smoke is the big killer in fires -- more so than flames. People have been known to stop everything and get medical help if the dog detects an impending stroke or heart attack.
A firearm in the wrong hands is dangerous, and crooks are known to turn users' guns against the guns' owners. Dogs cannot be so turned.
Dogs deter crime. Except for good behavior, a medium-to-large dog might as well be a bear or Big Cat. Multiple small dogs have much the same effect. If the analogy seems absurd, then consider that in a televised circus, the dog act and the tiger act were basically the same. You do not want a dog as an enemy; burglars, muggers, and rapists are meat.
Firearms are excellent tools for suicide. Dogs can get people out of extreme depression. Dogs are smart enough to figure us out (they think like the predators that they are) and recognize when we are in trouble. Dogs seem to have characteristics that many of us like in ourselves, including conscience. Is that unlikely in an animal built to kill? Dogs are above us in the food chain. Considering that some dogs are similar in size to bears and Big Cats, and bears and Biug Cats are completely untrustworthy, maybe there is something to canine conscience.
A firearm in the wrong hands is dangerous, and crooks are known to turn users' guns against the guns' owners. Dogs cannot be so turned.
Dogs deter crime. Except for good behavior, a medium-to-large dog might as well be a bear or Big Cat. Multiple small dogs have much the same effect. If the analogy seems absurd, then consider that in a televised circus, the dog act and the tiger act were basically the same. You do not want a dog as an enemy; burglars, muggers, and rapists are meat.
Firearms are excellent tools for suicide. Dogs can get people out of extreme depression. Dogs are smart enough to figure us out (they think like the predators that they are) and recognize when we are in trouble. Dogs seem to have characteristics that many of us like in ourselves, including conscience. Is that unlikely in an animal built to kill? Dogs are above us in the food chain. Considering that some dogs are similar in size to bears and Big Cats, and bears and Biug Cats are completely untrustworthy, maybe there is something to canine conscience.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.