Well, okay. If you absolutely have to.
See, now that’s moving the goalposts to the point that we’re barely even talking about football anymore. Your question as posed above applies to pretty much everybody. Who doesn’t think about how the world would be better off if someone shot Kim Jong-Il or any of a number of other people that are perceived as evil? Who wouldn’t go back to 1933 and shoot Hitler with the knowledge they have now? But that’s not the same as what we’ve been talking about, so in your zeal to make me concede a point, thus cementing your “win”, we’ve left the realm of reality and gone straight to absurdity. Congratulations on your victory, hollow though it is.
[sub]Now I remember why I try to stay out of these sorts of arguments…[/sub]
Look, it’s Bryan’s fault anyway. He’s the one who started this whole hijack when he admitted he got a chubby thinking about blowing a girl scout’s head off with a combat shotgun. (I don’t recall the exact phrasing, but that was the gist of it.) And I wasn’t talking about using a Wayback Machine to assassinate Hitler, although I can see how my words might’ve been misinterpreted that way.
All that said, I accept your gracious concession and look forward to many more reasoned debates.
Goody. So, the next time you encounter a situation similar to that in the OP, you can sit down with the spectators, discuss the options available, ensure that everyone has an opportunity to voice their opinion, and vote on what to do.
While you’re doing that, hopefully someone like Airman Doors, Weirddave, or me will chance upon the scene and take action.
I don’t think that was his point. Yes, hopefully someone will take action. But we’re also holding our heads in the sand assuming that there’s going to be as happy an ending as we all hope. Life isn’t that uncomplicated.
Hold on there, big fella. I don’t think there are many people in this thread who could come upon a scene like that and not take some action. I think the point in debate is that not everyone would use a gun.
I’m just going to make one last point and then I’m out for the night.
I’m not against gun ownership. I wish to God hat someone trained in firearms with a steady hand had been there to save the kid. What I am railing against is the assumption that had, oh let’s say, Wierddave, Airman Doors, danceswithcats or whoever had been there that everything would have turned out ginger peachy. That’s not a given. And by extension, the tacit assumption that that makes us somehow better than the people who were actually there in the sitiuation. Do we know that there wasn’t someone there with a gun who judged wisely that it wasn’t a good idea to use it for fear of killing the kid himself or possibly harming others? No, I don’t think so.
All this big talk about what someone would have done is just so much armchair quarterbacking. We weren’t there.
Sweet dreams!
No offense, but given that numerous people had the opportunity to do something but shied away, I submit that there are very few people in this thread that would see that and take action. The membership here is no less representative of the whole as the people who were there, unless you think that there is something exceptional about the members here that would make them act differently.
I see no such assumption. There is, though, the comment that the presence of someone with a firearm might have taken the opportunity to use it to try to save the kid instead of having to wait until the police arrived.
Mad props for saying this instead of “try and”.
Perhaps, but the point that SHOULD be in debate is “You don’t know what you would have done, because you weren’t there. You have no idea what you would do in a situation like that, because it’s never happened to you, and you don’t even know enough about this one to judge.”
Let’s not be ridiculous. My fantasy is merely to tackle a school shooter, take one of his guns, and calmly put two in his chest and one in his head.
Having graduated from two schools where fatal shootings occurred (though I was only a student at the time for one incident), this particular fantasy is quite engaging.
Frankly, if you can’t imagine a circumstance where you would kill someone, then you’re a useless, spineless blob who deserves no more than to live in a puddle at the mercy of whatever political wind creates ripples in your slimy formless surface.
Or a very dedicated pacifist with strong moral convictions who has thought a great deal about the matter.
Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it on purpose. I’m just not sure if I could do it without hesitating too long to make a difference. The thought does make me feel ill.
Which is, in the ultimate analysis, functionally equivalent to Bryan’s blob.
I’m not a girl.
And I meant “don’t open this debate again,” because I knew that it would become concealed carry debate #654,283 and would feature multiple pages of the Concealed Carry Will Save The World Crew making the same tired fucking arguments just like they do every. single. fucking. time that there’s a thread about an event where there’s a chance, no matter how remote, that someone with a gun could have changed the outcome.
And what fucking happened? Exactly that, of course.
Honestly, don’t you guys ever get tired of rehashing this shit over and over and over and over again?
Extremely so. And to think that it started with a single suggestion. No insults, no recriminations, just the mere suggestion that someone with a gun might have been able to stop this guy, and the anti-gun people come out of the woodwork like ants with typical characteristic insults.
You don’t want it to happen anymore? Stop making a big deal over it. Concealed carry is a fact. Being upset about it won’t make any difference.
Both sides are guilty. The suggestion was bait. He knew when he made it that someone was going to jump up and snatch that bait because they always do, and that then this would happen. Again.
I beg to disagree. Devoted pacifists are brave people. Note that pacifism does not mean nonconfrontation, it does not mean not putting your life on the line, it simply means that you will not hurt another.
I can think of nothing braver than the Quakers who, while conscientious objectors, worked like mad to support and free the slaves, helping to found the Underground Railroad, establishing and working in schools to educate said freed slaves, and so on. Not to mention those who served as fire fighters in WWI and II. Or those who served as human testers for new drugs and vaccines. Or field medics.
Those people were not blobs. And they helped change the world.
Any “pacifists” who aided the war effort, indirectly contributed to the killing of other people, so their philosophy is kind of flawed. A Quaker field medic is ultimately a mechanic fixing killing machines. He’s helping his fellow man (which he should be commended for, of course) but he’s helping him go on killing.
Well, fortunately for them, they live in societes that have people who will.