Live to Work vs Work to Live

I wouldn't want to delve into a political or philosophical argument, as I see this going off-topic, but here are my thoughts.

tigertrader 

because they want to, and they have the right to

I see two uses of a gun:

1. To kill animals as a sport.
2. To kill people in self-defense.

As soon as I had gotten deep enough into physics, I realized that I could achieve (1) very effectively if I wanted to. I had a friend who assembled a fission reactor over 2 nights in his dorm room (he won the ISEF a year before that, on particle acceleration, so he had the appropriate knowledge, since the vacuum hardware is the most difficult part). All he needed to was to dial up a couple of parameters and he could decimate all of the animals in a 1 mile radius. Sporting - yes - but I think it's distasteful.

As for (2): I agree that people should be allowed to defend themselves. However, I disagree that they should be handed guns to do it, because guns aren't that effective weapons anyway (it's well-documented that people have been struck in the head and still continued to cause damage). A more effective weapon of self-defense would be a grenade launcher. So all guns should be banned and grenade launchers should be sold in lieu of guns. I'm serious.

tigertrader 

gee, i'm surprised you didn't include Israel, or is this just an indictment of hedonism?

Perhaps - I haven't thought too much about other sociopolitical issues.

tigertrader 

Yeah, I'm sure we can all relate - each $10 million is just a little smaller than then the last $10 million.

Actually, the first $10M comes much easier than the next $100M. Ask those around you who have made it above the $100M mark and I'll wager that they agree. In today's environment, it's fairly easy to achieve the first $10M by sheer chance.