Why should Americans suffer impositions like these when they could all be avoided by refusing immigration by Muslims?

Restricting immigration by Muslims would arguably be an imposition on foreign Muslims, but one which they earned by being (how shall I put this delicately?) unclubbable. Uncongenial. In fact, extremely annoying and destructive. (Don’t start babbling the “most Muslims are not mass murderers” crap. Do you know what a normal distribution is? Of course most Muslims are not mass murderers (they just, per their own testimony to pollsters support them heartily), but since the mean Muslim propensity for mass murder is far, far higher than the ordinary American propensity, bring a bunch of Muslims into America predicts, to a statistical certainty, a bunch of “excess” (i.e., easily avoidable) mass murders down the road.)

Three axes analysis? On the oppression scale, minimizing the influx of Muslims to America requires a small imposition on them (if a million Muslims moved to the US every year, that would be a huge number for us, but circa 1/10 of 1% of Muslims worldwide, so negligible for them). Not much oppression there. Freedom/coercion? According to our own political masters and now even our libertarian bloggers (looking at you, Dr. Harrass-law-abiding-American-gun-owners-more Kling!) Muslim immigration requires significant coercion of Americans, while averting Muslim immigration requires almost none. Advantage: immigration limits. Civilization/barbarism? To be a devout Muslim is to be a barbarian. The tenets and cultural baggage of Islam, as expressed and practiced by today’s Muslims (not as found in dusty history books next to descriptions of the Spanish Inquisition) are barbaric by the standards of the whole developed world. In addition to incestuous marriage causing shameful rates of birth defects, FGM, near-enslavement of women, and internecine violence on a scale incomprehensible to most Americans, in 2006 the entire Arab world published only one new book for every 40,000 people. The USA published a new book for every 1,900 people. That wasn’t just a question of wealth– Vietnam published around one for every 4,000. The most polite way to secure peace between barbarians and civilized people is separation– good fences make good neighbors.

(Before you-all bring it up, I am in favor of free trade with Muslim countries. The benefits of trade are large and the externalities miniscule. The externalities of immigration are monstrous.)

*A counterproductive and hateful imposition– disarming potential victims will only make it easier for Muslims (as well as local criminals) to attack them. It requires a remarkable degree of stupidity to think that Jihadis intending mass murder will back away for fear of violating gun-control ordinances.

But more than that, the assumptions inherent in his statement, that in every scenario there is only A (SINGLE) INTRUDER, who would always be WARDED OFF by no more than a COUPLE OF SHOTS, should give him pause as a thinking person who is reacting to a mass killing by people who don’t fit that description at all.

In other words, when you find yourself essentially quoting Joe Biden on guns, “Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door,” it’s time to step away from the keyboard.

Libertarianism differs from anarchism. It recognizes the role of government – indeed, libertarians often accept that government is inevitable from a game theory perspective, so anarchism is as foolish as socialism – if not more so.

In practice, libertarianism says that, with respect to virtually any issue, the most successful government policy approach is to make a strong, but rebuttable presumption of liberty.

Libertarians accept rebuttals of the presumption – that’s what makes them libertarians, not anarchists. We accept a role for the state in enforcing contracts, protecting private property rights, establishing right-of-way rules on roads, punishing those who think the freedom of their fist extends past the tip of someone else’s nose, and dealing with externalities when coasean bargaining cannot.

Guns have very significant externality problems (closely related to the fist-nose problem, but worse). The libertarian position would be to ask whether the market can address this problem by itself and, if not, whether there is compelling evidence (not merely evidence or hope or supposition, but compelling evidence) that a government policy could do better.

There’s a great deal of heat around this issue, and I have seen little evidence of either, i.e., the market has not addressed this problem, and it’s not clear to me that any actually-proposed government policy would do better. Indeed, there is some evidence that actual government policies have made matters worse, in some cases.

But, it seems to me that exploring government policies to address the externalities of guns is entirely consistent with libertarianism.

Then you’ve never been in an encounter when your life was threatened. It often happens with several assailants and aiming accurately under stress is difficult.

Fully automatic firearms are almost totally impossible to get without letting the gov’t know everything about you and have been for decades. This hasn’t helped.

The fact that this occurred in the most strictly gun controlled state in the nations should tell you something about the effectiveness of gun control. It doesn’t work. The argument that we just need a national policy of strict gun control doesn’t bear out in the literature and doesn’t make sense on its face. If the “gun control works” view were correct, states/cities that are more permissive would be more violent. They aren’t, QED.

Further, the 2nd amendment wasn’t designed purely for self defense against a single armed intruder (which seems to be the only thing you think can happen). It was designed as a defense against tyranny. One needn’t bring up Kristallnacht, but one could: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Lessons-from-Nazi-gun-control-5626703.php