Sure, but it’s not the simplistic sort of maximalist utilitarianism you initially thought it was. I am in no way, shape or form declaring that anything at all would be okay as long as it reduced net human deaths.
Nobody’s denying that. And those are among the reasons that here in the real world, where there isn’t any ironclad magical guarantee of permanent total elimination of alcohol-related or gun-related deaths by outright banning alcohol or guns, I would not in fact be in favor of outright banning alcohol or guns.
But in that impossible black-and-white hypothetical that you yourself voluntarily introduced, where we could get such an ironclad magical guarantee of saving all those lives? Of course I’d give them up in a heartbeat, as I think any minimally ethical person should be willing to do.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said before, @Martin_Hyde. This appeal to tradition is INCREDIBLY simple minded. Only a complete imbecile would use such an argument to explain why freedom of speech is important, for example. This is because freedom of speech, unlike freedom of gun ownership, improves our society.
Make an argument that can’t be copied word to defend slavery, or Mexico City reimplementing Aztec human sacrifice, or Spain bringing back the inquisition.
If you can’t make a coherent argument as why society is better for having guns in it, don’t act shocked when people think you are a monster for being willing to suffer enormous costs to have something that has no benefit you can explain.
Then fuck off. You came into this with hostility and insults, and then whine and complain that you feel that you were not met with proper deferential treatment.
That’s not what you said, you said that it shouldn’t be a part of the Democratic platform at all. Talk about not giving a shit about truth, intellectual integrity, good faith, decent debate, or anything like that.
Those can certainly can be, and are, parts of the Democratic platform. That we don’t drop everything to cater to what you see as a priority doesn’t mean that we are lazy, quite the opposite in fact.
People also want the Democrats to drop their positions on civil rights, LGBTQ issues, and anything else that “caters to” a marginalized group of citizen of our country, as they feel that they are not “vote getters”. Are you of that opinion as well?
You certainly seem to want to adopt Republican strategies, both in politics and in debate. That you seek a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand doesn’t change the fact that how we gain power is as important as how we use that power.
The cult is less about the policies put forth by the Republicans, and more about the hate. It’s not really about abortion or guns, it’s about pwning the libs, something that you seem to be reveling in the belief that you are succeeding in doing here.
You put wealth inequality as one of those great crises. How do you think that the wealthy maintain that inequality? By getting us to fight eachother, rather than stand together against them. And you are working hard and cheap for their benefit right now.
The public doesn’t care about climate change. It’s a bunch of charts and graphs from coastal elite eggheads who want to take away your f-150 and cheeseburger. Storms and fires that affect places far away, sea level rise that’s never going to threaten voters in Ohio or Colorado aren’t existential dangers to the voters there.
I think that you are wrong that guns are not something that will get more votes than lose. If they run on a gun ban and confiscation, sure, that’s gonna crash and burn. But if they run on, what they are talking about right now, universal background checks for all gun transfers, that’s gonna be a winner, IMHO.
If, in your opinion, you don’t think that appealing to 80%+ of the American population is a winning strategy, then that’s fine, we can have different opinions on such things. But that doesn’t mean that other opinions are, as you say, “lazy with your reading comprehension, argumentation, media literacy, and knowledge”, and claiming that to be the case just makes you an asshole.
Not the same thing though. And pretty much everyone except very religious types has been drunk (likely more than once) and knows on some level how it impairs their ability to do stuff like drive a car.
The law also says there’s a certain level of alcohol you can have in your body and still be able to drive a car (here it’s 0.05%) - a figure that’s been arrived at by proper scientific and expert research and advice, not emotional people on the internet crying “I hate it! I hate it! I hate you!”
People who don’t know anything about guns don’t understand why it’s not reasonable for a farmer to only be allowed a double-barrelled shotgun, or why someone competing in clay target shooting or long-range rifle shooting might derive benefits from that beyond “I like shooting stuff” and why telling them “find another sport” isn’t appropriate.
Telling an entire international competition-level sport to stop existing because you don’t like the equipment it uses is just risible, frankly.
These are common sentiments among anti-gun people and I’m pretty sure they’ve been expressed on the boards in one of the threads about the Texas tragedy or its fallout.
So I think you’ve raised good points, and I want to respond to them, but it’s a lot of work responding to all the posts directed at me, so I’ll get around to it later. It was unfair of me to say “none of you” in what I said, since some of you are engaging in real debate (like you, in this post).
But I disagree with you that I came into this with hostility and insults. What are you talking about?
So, you are arguing about what you perceive as “common sentiments” that you’re “pretty sure have been expressed” rather than actually against the post you are responding to.
That’s a pretty useless debating tactic, only good for winning imaginary internet points in your head.
I have absolutely no idea how you possibly got that interpretation out of what I said in that thread. I also have no idea who you are or why you seem to hate me so much, but fortunately there’s an “ignore” button here which you’re more than welcome to make use of.
“Do any of you have the intellectual integrity to admit that there are things you prefer to be legal even though the availability/legality of that thing will cost innocent lives? Or are you going to continue to pretend that nothing you enjoy, advocate, or otherwise want available results in innocent deaths?”
Pretty hostile, and insulting, IMHO. It’s the Pit, so whatever, but it doesn’t start it off as though you are looking for a cogent debate, but a fight.
And linking back to the other thread, I do think that the whole alcohol thing is a complete hijack in whataboutism. We do care about alcohol related problems, and do work to mitigate them. We also care about car accidents, tobacco use, and even swimming pools. In all those cases, we take legislative action to mitigate the damage done by the enjoyment of these activities. Guns is the only public safety hazard that we do not. Bringing those subjects up as examples of times when we have worked to decrease the cost to society, and how we can similarly do so with guns is, IMHO, useful. Bringing them up to claim that we don’t care about them, and shouldn’t care about gun violence until we solve those other ones, is, once again, IMHO, not.
If you disagree that those are whataboutism hijacks, that’s a difference of opinion. It doesn’t mean that those who do lack intellectual integrity.
I’d agree that they are roughly the sentiments that are expressed by some of the more vocal opponents of gun violence, though I’d say your description was a bit hyperbolic even for that.
I would not say that they are the sentiments expressed by the majority of those who are against gun violence.
Debating the former, while responding to the latter, is, IMHO, very disingenuous.
I can’t agree. I wasn’t attacking anyone personally. Others in this thread were calling anyone who wanted guns to be legal a sick, perverted, twisted, child murderer because they were willing to pay for something they wanted in innocent lives. I pointed out that we all do this and challenged anyone to have the guts to admit it was true (which no one would, because, quite frankly, you’re all pretty cowardly on introspection).
Compare this to the insults and wild assumes and just completely untrue things thrown at me, I was conducting myself in a pretty upstanding way, I think. I was far more civil than the people personally attacking me that followed, calling me a liar and all sorts of often internally inconsistent insults that were entirely based on perceiving me as the enemy, rather than perceiving me as a bad faith actor or some other justification for that hostility.
As an aside, I’m surprised I didn’t get accused of sea lioning - a term which has some use but has quickly come to mean “anyone I want to dismiss because I don’t actually have a good argument to put up”
It really, truly isn’t. I am not taking a position on gun rights, when I say that. I am not taking a position on legal alcohol. I am not saying one is better or worse than another. I am not saying one is more worthy of our solutions than another. I am not saying it is invalid to prioritize over the other, or literally any other thing that would make it whataboutism.
I am strictly attacking the faulty logic of people who suggest that anyone who is willing to advocate for something being legal, knowing that it being legal will cost innocent lives, is a monster, because pretty much everyone does that. That’s not whataboutism, that is enlightenment and introspection and trying to point out people making huge logical errors.
I think the alcohol analogy is spot-on, but let me try another one. Let’s say that terrorism becomes a lot more common in the US - like, people start bombing schools or cafes or whatever. The government proposes laws that would massively widen surveillance and searches and basically completely gut the fourth amendment. Some people oppose that. Proponents say that this security will save lives, that if you oppose the new laws that innocent people will die. There will some people who are willing to say “yes, I accept that innocent people will die, but it’s a cost I’m willing to pay to preserve our fundamental civil rights” - is that person an irredeemable monster baby killer who would kill innocent kids just because they don’t want to give up the right to privacy?
My only point in this is that we all wilingly advocate for things that will cost innocent lives because we think the tradeoff is worth it. Acting like this is some unique factor that only comes into play on the gun issue is irrational and weak minded.
And yes, I know this debate is similar to the one we had after 9/11. Plenty of liberals (rightfully) chose opposing expansive surveillance even though it could potentially cost lives to oppose it. If there were any terrorist attacks that would’ve succeeded in a world where we didn’t pass those measures, those deaths would’ve been the cost for us not adopting those polices, which is something that anyone who argued against the PATRIOT act was accepting.