Never mind. That answers my question.
There is a balance between pro and anti gun people. There is balance because there must be, but it seems neither side wants to seek that balance out. Better both sides should run around like monkeys with their asses on fire creating half-assed justifications for their half-assed positions and ignoring the truth.
This is the best example of completely missing the point I have ever seen in my life.
Are you citing Kellerman? You might want to doublecheck that claim.
Which raises an interesting point. I’ve not had a sniff of a charge sheet since summer 1990 … that’s nearly 19 years I’ve not been a criminal. Should I now be eligible to own a gun if I were living in your country, or would my past precede me, just like it does with all your worthless assumptions regarding my personality?
In truth, it would depend on your crime. Assuming that because you have a sheet that you have also paid your debt to society, barring your crime being a violent one or one using a firearm, you should be eligible.
Nope, shitbag, you wouldn’t be eligible. Nor should you be, IMO. I don’t have any problem with with felons who committed the types of crimes you’ve bragged about here losing their right to own firearms.
Everything I know about your personality, shitbag, is what you’ve told me here and on other boards. You’re a thief. You did it for kicks. You’ve been known to be violent with little to no provocation. You display no real remorse.
Shitbags are like drug addicts and alcoholics. You never stop being a shitbag, you just didn’t victimize anybody today.
Which implicates the other criticism I raised above: people use “moral” language to attempt to dress up their opinion into some sort of universal truth. If you think Joe is a morally reprehensible person for doing X, then that’s fine. If you want me to know about your opinion, then you can tell me about X and your opinion of it. I can then form my own opinion of X and of Joe for doing X. Saying that X is “morally wrong” doesn’t change any of this or add anything to the discussion, it just allows you to think that you are operating outside of your own opinion and are instead applying a universal set of moral laws, but this simply isn’t the case because “moral laws” do not exist.
The statement “X is morally wrong” translates into “my personal opinion is that I don’t like doing X or people that do X, but I’m not happy just having an opinion on the matter, I want others to agree with me, so I’m going to pretend that there is a set of rules that everyone accepts and that doing X violates those rules.” The speaker hasn’t actually said anything more in the second sentence than they did in the first but pretends that they have. This is dangerous because it can shortcut a full policy analysis (as I discussed above).
On the contrary, the response is spot on, but only because it’s fact. Anecdotally it doesn’t matter to the deceased if the gun looked like a hello kitty vibrator, however the news sells because the information within it is JUST BARELY accurate enough to slip by, and because people only hear what they want to hear, the truth and hard fact are not as pleasing to the monkey-brain palate as sensationalized inaccuracies.
Note: The above person is not the voice of pro-gun America.
There is proof that incarceration with rehabilitation can work for some people, even violent ones. I agree that there are broken people who we are completely unable to fix, but your broad brushed foolishness is exactly what the anti-gun crowd latches onto to paint with their own broad brushes.
Which implicates the other criticism I raised above: people use “moral” language to attempt to dress up their opinion into some sort of universal truth. If you think Joe is a morally reprehensible person for doing X, then that’s fine. If you want me to know about your opinion, then you can tell me about X and your opinion of it. I can then form my own opinion of X and of Joe for doing X. Saying that X is “morally wrong” doesn’t change any of this or add anything to the discussion, it just allows you to think that you are operating outside of your own opinion and are instead applying a universal set of moral laws, but this simply isn’t the case because “moral laws” do not exist.
The statement “X is morally wrong” translates into “my personal opinion is that I don’t like doing X or people that do X, but I’m not happy just having an opinion on the matter, I want others to agree with me, so I’m going to pretend that there is a set of rules that everyone accepts and that doing X violates those rules.” The speaker hasn’t actually said anything more in the second sentence than they did in the first but pretends that they have. This is dangerous because it can shortcut a full policy analysis (as I discussed above).
Objective moral laws may not exist, but widely-shared subjective ones do. A claim of moral responsibility is an appeal to that widely-shared underlying framework about how humans ought to conduct themselves. Indeed, some moral beliefs are so widely shared that only sociopaths do not intuitively and inexorably hold them. Moral argument proceeds by discussing shared intuitions about what is right and asking whether the case at hand can be rationally distinguished from the cases clearly decided by moral intuition. At it’s core, moral argument is simply an argument for intellectual consistency.
That is sometimes accurate. But it need not be. If you’re arguing about morality with people who do not believe in objective morality, then it is more accurate to say that the statement “X is morally wrong” translates to “Holding X to be OK while holding Y to be wrong is intellectually inconsistent.”
The majority of crime is committed by a minority of criminals. Repeat offenders are extremely common, if not in fact the majority. Even “first time offenders” typically have a long history of being a shitbag behind them. They are “first time offenders” only in the sense of having been caught and convicted for the first time.
…and another thing, you can sanctimoniously portray yourself as some kind of “voice of reason” as much as you like, and you won’t change any minds here. All you are accomplishing is, perhaps, making yourself feel better.
What is the NRA’s official policy on what to do when the government comes to take your gun away? Give it up willingly, wave it around and threaten to use it, or shoot to kill?
I’m thinking of Kellerman, and of Azrael and of Wiebe and of several other studies. What in particular, do you think I should double check? On which study should I do this double-checking?
If there’s one person you ain’t gotta tell about shitheads being shitheads, partner, it’s me. You’re saying once a shithead, always a shithead, I’m saying there’s evidence that isn’t true 100% of the time, and that you need to acknowledge that.
I’m not being sanctimonious, I’m just fucking tired of the constant flow of bullshit from both sides. There is absolutely a balance to be found, a middle ground to seek, something honest in the revelation that perhaps I have the same right to own a gun as I do not to be killed by some nutwad who was able to work the system and get one.
Seriously, there IS a middle.
I did acknowledge that there are “recovering shitbags” just like there are recovering alcoholics, didn’t I? Some shitbags learn to control their shitbag behaviors, just like some alcoholics learn to control their drinking. I am unconvinced, though, that the fundamental aspects of personality that lead one to be a shitbag in the first place are ever changed.
…
Wonder if there will ever be a gun debate among the middle of the roaders. It is always dominated by Pavlovian gun nuts who fight any and all discussions with rabid fervor. Next debate try eliminating the berzerkers like Towers and see if an intelligent discussion can ensue.
Got those cites yet on handguns in Colonial America, gonzo me ol’ china? Oh wait…you can’t have them because you just made that shit up. You’re nothing but a plain old garden variety liar.
Now go find a thread to participate in where you haven’t destroyed your own credibility.
Yes, I absolutely do. (How stupid would somebody have to be to think that I didn’t, after reading everything I’ve said in this thread?)
Anyway what difference does it make whether the people he killed are police, or not? They’re just people, like the rest of us. People die every day, for every conceivable reason. I’m not going to erase one of the amendments of our constitution because a few police officers were shot (their death is a drop in the bucket compared to everyone else dying in every other way.)
The average individual needs to own those weapons because the average individual might be just as much in danger every day as the police are. What if the average person is a shop owner in a ghetto neighborhood who might get robbed? What if the average person is a little old lady who has to walk through a rough neighborhood at night to get home from work? What if the average person is someone in a wheelchair who could never have a chance in hell of escaping from, or fighting off, an attacker? What if the average person is a tow truck driver or repo man (a job that puts you in a position to confront angry, desperate and often drunken people every day?)
These people need to protect themselves too.