Guns: Newsweek proposes a compromise

[ElvisL1ves]

@XT

Naw, it’s not about the value of human life, unless with a straight face you can tell me you campaign equally against every other thing that society sanctions that causes death.

Only things intended to cause death. Things that don’t have a number of people massively resisting doing anything to reduce deaths. Things that have primary, necessary purposes other than causing death, and which society puts a great deal of effort into making less dangerous.

using stats to underscore how terrible and scary it is

Just let that sink in for a moment. You’re objecting to the use of facts in a discussion. Is there a reason for that other than that they falsify a manufactured emotional position?

while you probably never give a moments thought to other things that you don’t care about, don’t think about or even agree with that cause more deaths and have societies sanction (or don’t).

No doubt you have a few examples in mind. So how about telling us all what else you think we don’t care about, but that you do? And what you’re doing about them?

[Bone]

@ElvisL1ves

Nevertheless, there are about 30 gun deaths every day in the US, roughly 30 times more than the “defensive gun uses” the Second Commandment absolutists hold so dear.

This is false. Please show your math if you’d like to be proven wrong.

“Second Commandment absolutists”?

@ElvisL1ves

:rolleyes: That sort of childish language does not help you.

Indeed.

[XT]

[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
Only things intended to cause death. Things that don’t have a number of people massively resisting doing anything to reduce deaths. Things that have primary, necessary purposes other than causing death, and which society puts a great deal of effort into making less dangerous.
[/QUOTE]

Ah…so, you want to create an artificial distinction because people killed with a gun are somehow deader than people killed through other things, right? What ‘primary, necessary purposes other than causing death, and which society puts a great deal of effort into making less dangerous’ do alcohol and cigarettes serve? And why am I less dead if some crazy wacko shoots me in a theater with a gun or kills me while driving up the wrong side of the street because he’s totally shit faced drunk? I’ll tell you that in my state, despite the amount of gun violence, I’m MUCH more likely to be killed by the shit faced drunk fool than by some nut with a gun.

Just let that sink in for a moment. You’re objecting to the use of facts in a discussion. Is there a reason for that other than that they falsify a manufactured emotional position?

No…I’m objecting to the use of stats to spin the argument. And the attempt at pushing emotional buttons to achieve the goal.

No doubt you have a few examples in mind. So how about telling us all what you think we don’t care about?

I’ve already done so in this and other threads on this subject, but sure…alcohol. Tell me, do you campaign against it’s use? I mean, it kills and injures a hell of a lot more people per year not only in the US but world wide. Ironically, many of the gun deaths in the US are a result of the use of alcohol. Hardly a week goes by in my own neck of the woods without yet another story on the news (local news) of some idiot drinking and driving and getting himself or, more often someone else killed. And we know that prohibition actually did reduce deaths due to alcohol when it was enacted, yet we as a society chose to remove it and re-sanction the use of alcohol by society, despite also knowing that a large non-zero number of citizens would be killed or injured (or die from it’s long term effects) despite that.

My guess is you DON’T campaign against alcohol or for it’s banning in the same way you do with guns because you create an artificial distinction about what something is made for and then you don’t think about it. I’m also guessing that you haven’t ever really looked, deeply at the stats for what alcohol does wrt injuries and deaths per year, and if you did you handwaved them away, since guns are SO scary in your mind, while alcohol is something you are familiar with and so generally flies under the radar wrt the carnage it causes.

My point, of course, is that it’s all the same thing. Societies often sanction things that cause a non-zero amount of death and injury. Guns are one of those things that in the US are sanctioned despite the plain fact that by doing so there WILL be a number of people killed and injuries by that decision every year. Just like many, many other things that society sanctions for use will cause a non-zero number of deaths or injuries. What YOUR problem is really isn’t the ‘value of human life’, it’s that you don’t agree with this particular sanction.

[Lumpy]

@XT

Naw, it’s not about the value of human life, unless with a straight face you can tell me you campaign equally against every other thing that society sanctions that causes death. What it is is that this sanction you don’t agree with, so therefore you are all ‘think of the children’ on it, using stats to underscore how terrible and scary it is, while you probably never give a moments thought to other things that you don’t care about, don’t think about or even agree with that cause more deaths and have societies sanction (or don’t).

Unfortunately this argument doesn’t convince the antis. They consider all the other things that can occasionally cause injury or death to have that as merely unfortunate side effects. It’s because firearms are intentionally designed to injure or kill people and other living beings that guns outrage them. Nothing flies more in the face of (pseudo-)pacifism than the contention that on rare occasions killing or threatening to kill someone is the right thing to do.

Apparently in their view the key to a peaceful society isn’t to teach responsibility and respect for others’ lives, but instead to instill a visceral unthinking revulsion to the idea of harming someone for any reason. To indoctrinate the population to be too squeamish to harm others. And as for the criminals and sociopaths that the conditioning process fails to work on, they’ll be caught (eventually) by the police- who perhaps will be cloned in vats since they’ll have to be so different mentally from the [del]proles[/del] public.

If that sounds like a science-fiction parody it’s because that more or less is the ultimate endpoint of the (dys)utopian idea of engineering society. If you’re familiar with Larry Niven’s ARM stories you’ll know exactly what I mean.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Bone

This is false. Please show your math if you’d like to be proven wrong.

Been over that in the Pit thread. You failed.

“Second Commandment absolutists”?

If you’re denying that the Second is often held to be the only part of the Constitution that is not compromisable, or that the view is indistinguishable from religious belief, then say so. Otherwise, it’s just being factual.

[Bone]

@ElvisL1ves

Been over that in the Pit thread. You failed.

I choose not to respond to you in the Pit. I find it unproductive. If you’d like to retreat there and call that a victory, feel free. However, you made a claim in this thread - **are you refusing to support it? ** I don’t think you can support it. I think your claim is so ridiculous that any attempt to do so will reveal how poor a claim it actually is. I invite you to make a modicum of effort and demonstrate the validity of your claim.

If you’re denying that the Second is often held to be the only part of the Constitution that is not compromisable, or that the view is indistinguishable from religious belief, then say so. Otherwise, it’s just being factual.

Factual…hardly. I’m mocking your criticism of childish language while at the same time you engage in name calling. It’s comical.

[Gyrate]

@XT

My point, of course, is that it’s all the same thing. Societies often sanction things that cause a non-zero amount of death and injury. Guns are one of those things that in the US are sanctioned despite the plain fact that by doing so there WILL be a number of people killed and injuries by that decision every year. Just like many, many other things that society sanctions for use will cause a non-zero number of deaths or injuries. What YOUR problem is really isn’t the ‘value of human life’, it’s that you don’t agree with this particular sanction.

Conversely, what we do do is work to mitigate the risks inherent in alcohol without banning it, since the ban was fundamentally ineffective. So we restrict access to alcohol to those above a certain age, with heavily regulated sales and state and local regulations on how and when it can be used. And we do the same to cars - we don’t ban them even though there are thousands of road deaths each year, but we heavily regulate their use, requiring users to be licensed and regularly tested, the cars themselves to be inspected, and users to follow a long list of rules. And the manufacturers themselves work to make cars safer for both passengers and others. And so on and so forth for a variety of consumer goods.

So let’s not pretend that those wanting more regulation of guns cavalierly disregard dangers posed by other things. Of course, most of those other things don’t have a powerful lobby fighting against efforts to make those changes.

[ElvisL1ves]

@XT

Ah…so, you want to create an artificial distinction because people killed with a gun are somehow deader than people killed through other things, right?

Wrong, and you’re not demonstrating either the ability or the will to understand what you’re being told with that claim. :rolleyes: Now do you want to try again? Or do you want to claim that there’d be just as many people killed without the ready, effective means to do it as there are with it?

What ‘primary, necessary purposes other than causing death, and which society puts a great deal of effort into making less dangerous’ do alcohol and cigarettes serve?

You know how much effort goes into reducing their accessibility and effects, and how much public education work goes into that, don’t you? Things the gun lobby strenuously resists?

And why am I less dead if some crazy wacko shoots me in a theater with a gun or kills me while driving up the wrong side of the street because he’s totally shit faced drunk?

You aren’t. But it’s a lot less likely to happen, isn’t it? Now tell us why. :rolleyes:

No…I’m objecting to the use of stats to spin the argument. And the attempt at pushing emotional buttons to achieve the goal.

Then counter with facts of your own. The pushing of emotional buttons disclaimer applies only if you don’t accept that preserving human life is the most fundamental moral precept there is, in any civilization. If you wish to deride it, you need to show what moral precept is even more fundamental to you. So whaddaya got?

I’ve already done so in this and other threads on this subject, but sure…alcohol. Tell me, do you campaign against it’s use?

Yes. And I support measures to limit its lethality. Do you?

Ironically, many of the gun deaths in the US are a result of the use of alcohol.

And guns. And assholes/idiots. The asshole/idiot problem is intractable, but the physical object problem is not.

guns are SO scary in your mind

Death is scary. Death at the hands of assholes is scary. Death at the hands of assholes with the means to cause death is scary. The ready availability to assholes of objects with no other reason to exist than to cause death is scary. The indistinguishability of assholes from “law-abiding citizens”, often even to themselves, is scary. A chunk of metal just lying there? Not in itself. I do understand how popular is the manufactured claim that “you’re afraid of guns” (Damuri Ajashi even has a favorite invented word for it, one that gives him a great case of the snickers), but it’s still bogus.

alcohol is something you are familiar with and so generally flies under the radar wrt the carnage it causes.

Like hell it does. Tell that to the State Police trooper the next time he stops you.

My point, of course, is that it’s all the same thing.

No, it is not, not unless your claim is that we need to reinstate Prohibition before the resisters of responsibility can accept doing anything else.

Societies often sanction things that cause a non-zero amount of death and injury.

How many preventable gun deaths should we sanction? And what do we gain by sanctioning them? I often come across the claim that some rate should be considered “acceptable”, but never what that rate is.

What YOUR problem is really isn’t the ‘value of human life’, it’s that you don’t agree with this particular sanction.

Wrong again, although you do get credit for using at least high-school level grammar. I don’t agree with permitting unnecessary deaths for no good reason. Why do you?

[Haberdash]

@Gyrate

Conversely, what we do do is work to mitigate the risks inherent in alcohol without banning it, since the ban was fundamentally ineffective. So we restrict access to alcohol to those above a certain age, with heavily regulated sales and state and local regulations on how and when it can be used. And we do the same to cars - we don’t ban them even though there are thousands of road deaths each year, but we heavily regulate their use, requiring users to be licensed and regularly tested, the cars themselves to be inspected, and users to follow a long list of rules. And the manufacturers themselves work to make cars safer for both passengers and others. And so on and so forth for a variety of consumer goods.

So “anyone over 21 can buy a gun as long as they don’t shoot it out the window while driving” works for you, then?

So let’s not pretend that those wanting more regulation of guns cavalierly disregard dangers posed by other things. Of course, most of those other things don’t have a powerful lobby fighting against efforts to make those changes.

As if alcohol regulation isn’t a heavily politicized battle between the shrieking neo-prohibitionists at MADD and the Republican-linked breweries with their powerful lobbyists. As if the remaining dry counties and ABC states aren’t intricately linked to nine-figure levels of corruption every year. As if the ridiculous way in which “underage drinking” on the college campus is addressed isn’t a major source of negative externalities. As if issues of race, class, and religion aren’t heavily tied into selective enforcement of all of these laws.

Before you hold up alcohol regulation as a model for gun regulation, you might want to make sure you aren’t showing your ignorance of two topics at once.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Gyrate]
Conversely, what we do do is work to mitigate the risks inherent in alcohol without banning it, since the ban was fundamentally ineffective.
[/QUOTE]

Do you have a cite that the bans on alcohol during Prohibition were ‘fundamentally ineffective’?? Because I think that they were quite effective in lowering the number of deaths and injuries due to alcohol during the time it was in effect. What was ultimately flawed was the conception that Americans were more concerned about the carnage than they were about the right to a choice.

So we restrict access to alcohol to those above a certain age, with heavily regulated sales and state and local regulations on how and when it can be used. And we do the same to cars - we don’t ban them even though there are thousands of road deaths each year, but we heavily regulate their use, requiring users to be licensed and regularly tested, the cars themselves to be inspected, and users to follow a long list of rules. And the manufacturers themselves work to make cars safer for both passengers and others. And so on and so forth for a variety of consumer goods.

Guns are also regulated, often heavily depending on where in the country we are talking about, and the same age restrictions for purchasing guns is in effect for alcohol and cigarettes. But you and others want to pretend that there are zero regulations on guns and that the real fight is simply trying to get any regulations at all in the face of stubborn gun rights types, while the reality is that people have been trying to ban guns (and in fact, have succeeded in some parts of the country with that plan) outright, and that many of the regulations put in place in the last few decades had that ultimate goal in mind…unless the people pushing there were idiots doing the equivalent of banning a bottle of vodka because the label looked scary. Now, I’m willing to go along with the proposition that some of the folks who were pushing those cosmetic bans WERE idiots, but not all of them.

So let’s not pretend that those wanting more regulation of guns cavalierly disregard dangers posed by other things. Of course, most of those other things don’t have a powerful lobby fighting against efforts to make those changes.

And yet, the reality is still there…alcohol kills many many more people per year than guns do. Cigarettes also kill more people per year than guns do. Hell, cheeseburgers and over eating kills more people per year than guns do.

[Lumpy]

@ElvisL1ves

If you’re denying that the Second is often held to be the only part of the Constitution that is not compromisable, or that the view is indistinguishable from religious belief, then say so. Otherwise, it’s just being factual.

The Second Amendment isn’t uncompromisable; we just don’t want it compromised out of existence, which was what we were heading for before the backlash against gun control. We have laws against minors, felons, and the adjudicated insane from possessing guns. We have zoning laws for gun shops and firing ranges. We have laws about reckless endangerment, and what behavior with a gun constitutes an illegal threat. We have a slew of federal laws regulating the sale of firearms, including both outright and de facto bans on some guns, of dubious constitutionality. In short, we already have all the reasonable laws compatible with a right to own and carry weapons. The line is crossed when laws are proposed that basically say “You know, it really would be better if fewer people had guns, period.”

[HurricaneDitka]

@ElvisL1ves

There’s no misconception. Their power comes from money, money raised mainly from the gun and ammo manufacturers but also from the members they keep prodding into a state of fear about their guns getting taken away and the Bad Guys invading their homes if they don’t donate all their disposable income, and not incidentally into buying more guns and ammo from the manufacturers, who then “invest” in keeping the cycle continuing. That money turns into buying votes, including those used to frustrate Manchin-Toomey and any similar proposals despite overwhelming public support.

You think the politicians voted against Manchin-Toomey because, in spite of “overwhelming public support” (what was it? 90%? 95%? 99%? 105%?), the money the NRA donates to their campaigns trumps all that? Most of them don’t get ANY money from the NRA.

My alternate theory is that they know the polls on the subject are BS, and that the only people that care about the issue (at least in any significant numbers) strongly opposed Manchin-Toomey.

Campaign contributions aren’t what makes the NRA powerful. It’s the fact that they have millions of motivated and knowledgeable citizens on their side.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Lumpy

The Second Amendment isn’t uncompromisable; we just don’t want it compromised out of existence, which was what we were heading for before the backlash against gun control.

And that’s where the absolutism comes into the description. You cannot envision any sort of compromise or limitation short of an absolute ban, so any suggestion that you consider one is met with the slippery-slope fallacy and simple straw-manning.

We have laws against minors, felons, and the adjudicated insane from possessing guns.

So tell us how Houser owned legally. :dubious:

In short, we already have all the reasonable laws compatible with a right to own and carry weapons. The line is crossed when laws are proposed that basically say “You know, it really would be better if fewer people had guns, period.”

But that’s the effect of all the restrictions you are forced to admit are reasonable, to the laughable extent they are even enforced, and despite all the whining you give us about even those. Not to mention all the silly fantasies about resisting gummint jackboot tyranny.

@HurricaneDitka

My alternate theory is that they know the polls on the subject are BS, and that the only people that care about the issue (at least in any significant numbers) strongly opposed Manchin-Toomey.

That’s an alternate theory, all right. Got anything to back it up other than bravado?

[Bruce_Wayne]

@Muffin

Gun nuts. The USA has a shit load of gun nuts.

You didn’t spell “silent majority” correctly.

[Bone]

@ElvisL1ves

… Got anything to back it up other than bravado?

@Bone

I choose not to respond to you in the Pit. I find it unproductive. If you’d like to retreat there and call that a victory, feel free. However, you made a claim in this thread - **are you refusing to support it? ** I don’t think you can support it. I think your claim is so ridiculous that any attempt to do so will reveal how poor a claim it actually is. I invite you to make a modicum of effort and demonstrate the validity of your claim.

I ask you again, are you refusing to support your claim? Here it was for reference:

@ElvisL1ves

Nevertheless, there are about 30 gun deaths every day in the US, roughly 30 times more than the “defensive gun uses” the Second Commandment absolutists hold so dear.

[Haberdash]

It’s actually about 92 deaths by firearm per day. I guess when the numbers just appear from the air they are as likely to be low as high. Of course, that number includes suicides and justifiable homicides, so it would be a mistake to treat it as representative of only murders and accidents.

As for the “only 1 defensive gun use per day” stat, that’s as pulled out of the ass as the 30 figure. It’s notoriously hard to get an accurate count of defensive gun uses since the definition is ambiguous and many of them are not reported to anyone (you don’t call the police because you opened your jacket and the person intimidating you walked away, usually). But it’s obviously more than 1 per day.

[HurricaneDitka]

@ElvisL1ves

That’s an alternate theory, all right. Got anything to back it up other than bravado?

The Senate vote itself? The fact that most of those who voted against Manchin-Toomey managed to win re-election, despite the seething rage of the unwashed masses at their opposition to “common-sense gun control”?

Almost all of the single-issue voters are on the side of gun rights. The politicians know this, which is why it doesn’t matter what you or the two dozen or so gun control supporters Bloomberg can turn out to a rally think and it does matter what the NRA thinks.

[ElvisL1ves]

@HurricaneDitka

The Senate vote itself?

The majority in favor, with the Gun Party having to resort to filibustering once again? That one?

the seething rage of the unwashed masses at their opposition to “common-sense gun control”?

Dude. :rolleyes:

Almost all of the single-issue voters are on the side of gun rights.

True enough. There is a substantial faction for whom that’s all that matters - that’s why it’s fair to describe the view as quasi-religious, and unreceptive to any discussion.

[HurricaneDitka]

@ElvisL1ves

The majority in favor, with the Gun Party having to resort to filibustering once again? That one?

Why do you think Baucus, Begich, Heitkamp, and Pryor voted against the Manchin-Toomey bill?

[wolfpup]

@HurricaneDitka

The gun control crowd’s vilification of the NRA has always struck me as odd. They seem to tacitly admit that they’re one of the most powerful political forces in the country, but then have this weird disconnect where they fail to recognize where their political power comes from.

Their political power comes from their gun nut membership which makes up less than 1.6% of the population. It does not come from the other 98.4% of the population. And it certainly does not come from the 70% of American households who wisely choose not to own a gun at all.

The gun problem seems to be a lot like the old saying of park rangers trying to keep peace, quiet, and order in parks and campgrounds: 5% of the people cause 95% of the problems. In this case, look to the kinds of activist lunatics who belong to the NRA, who worship guns as a religion, who own at least a few dozen of them including the most dangerous models they can get their hands on, fervently believe they should carry them around everywhere, peddle phony and misleading statistics to the public implying that more guns will make a safer society, who block gun control efforts at every turn, and who believe that the overwhelmingly lower rates of gun violence in the rest of the civilized world is some kind of incomprehensible enduring mystery.

@HurricaneDitka

Campaign contributions aren’t what makes the NRA powerful. It’s the fact that they have millions of motivated and knowledgeable citizens on their side.

Would these be the “motivated and knowledgeable citizens” who think Wayne Lapierre is a sensible voice of reason? The guy the New York Times called “mendacious, delusional, almost deranged”?

@Bruce_Wayne

You didn’t spell “silent majority” correctly.

No, as noted above, “shit load of gun nuts” is correct.