Maybe a greater unintentional risk, but certainly not a greater risk. Do we really want to bring crime statistics into this. IIRC, people closer to the poverty line are more likely to commit a crime. Should we start registering poor people?
Nope. We don’t know enough about genetics period much less mutant genetics. There is no way to actually know what will happen when. Best guess right now is that it happens during puberty. Most statistics bear this out. Of course, you can drag secondary mutations into it. Then you get adults suddenly developing new powers that can be completely unrelated to their first power set.
So? There are mutations that are dangerous no matter what their carriers do. How does registration harm the others?
Senator Kelly is an asshole. I’m sure he wants to round up all mutants and shoot them. That doesn’t mean it will happen, and I can still support registration. If Kelly wants to pass the Mutant Killing Act, I’ll be against it. If he wants to pass the Mutant Internment Act, I’ll be against it. If he wants to pass the Take All Rights Away From Mutants Act, I’ll be against it.
He did no such thing. Is it insane to stop one murderer because there is another one somewhere else? Is it insane to prevent HIV spreading in Europe just because HIV spreads in Africa? No? Why, then, is it insane to register one dangerous group but not another?
Name one. One that doesn’t come down to simply calling it “persecution” or “insane”. Tell me exactly who is directly harmed by registration.
We need more research. Something determines the results of the gene’s existence, we only have to find it. If it turns out to be the circumstances of the activation of the gene, imagine the possibilities! The mutant could pick and choose what power he wanted. We could educate and train mutants and give them particular powers for particular purposes.
No? Any indication that mutants, but for their powers, pose a smaller risk than nonmutants? Since you agree that mutants pose a risk caused by their powers, you must either produce such indication or agree that mutants pose a greater risk.
Maybe, 'cause while I haven’t seen any hard studies, it seems to me that a disproportionate amount of mutants are criminals.
We kind of already are.
The one argument against registration that I can see is the fear that it will lead to something else, that persecution is facilitated by registration and so on.
Given the recent actions by Magneto, It’d be a little ridiculous to say that they aren’t a threat. The issue is whether or not they are a potentially greater threat than a normal human. That has yet to be proven.
Not really. For the most part, it takes five “good” mutants to take out one mutant criminal. That means good outweighs bad five to one. That doesn’t even factor in the mutants that don’t get involved or that we don’t even know about.
cite?
And the end result is that we are still forcing american citizens to register because of something that they cannot control.
On the contrary, I think that the Patriot Act is on balance a good set of laws, and I have found that often, on these very boards devoted to fighting ignorance, “the Patriot Act” is a subject of much confusion, with people ascribing many provisions to it that it doesn’t have.
I would as well say that all except the softest of heads believe any such agreement was reached. In fact, after repeated requests by me to get examples of slippery slopes that have actually HAPPENED from you, your most cogent response was - and I quote: " :rolleyes: "
Others have offered examples of guns in various societies, but have failed to address the propter hoc requirement necessary to address the slippery slope fallacy.
You have not even done that. So I’d certainly appreciate it if we have no more bland assertions from you concerning what agreements have or have not been reached.
Nothing like your opponent simply declaring victory after most recent attempt at cogent argument was a rolleyes smiley…
Not to go off on a tangent but, let’s say we can test someone and tell with certainty that he’s a mutant. And let’s say that this is one of those criminal mutants, is there some safe way to ‘turn the power off’ or ‘inhibit’ the mutant ability without harming the person?
I’m thinking along the lines of an idea i heard about how some sex offenders have to take drugs to curb their urges, under court order.
No, my response was to ask for good examples of cases where people who exhibit certain behaviors where put down into lists, and packed to change. (Post 74) Within the same post, I claimed I could think of one example, but that it would take this down a different road. Within my statement, I highlighted, and increased to font size three the letters “G o d w i n”. Two posts later, Harborwolf responded to my request for a non-nazi related example, and posted the example of the WWII era detention camps for Japanese Americans. After that occurred, you paid not the least bit of attention to his post. I only posted a smiley after you ignored my implication, and Wolf’s post.
On the contrary, acting out of fear of a potential threat is quite prudent… assuming you have accurately quantified the risk associated with the threat and are proposing countermeasures that are reasonably related to that risk.
Whether these countermeasures are reasonably related to the extant risk is what we’re discussing… but “acting out of fear” is not automatically wrong.
They already exist, and are used in prisons. They are called inhibitor collars, and are know for their distressing ability to break under physical strain, and under tampering. Rumor has it, this is due to substandard manufacture by companies associated with both the President, and the rumored social organization know only as “The Hellfire Club.”
I must admit that I missed your subtle “Godwin.” On my monitor, those letters look the same as your other letters. If I peer closely (middle-aged myopic eyes) I can perhaps see some difference, but it was too subtle for me on the first go-round.
So I guess I was whooshed.
Harborwolf’s analogy suffered the flaw I mentioned above: his example suffers from the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. He has not shown any initial registration requirements that ballooned into more serious measures. The quarentining of American Nisei was reprehensible, but I don;t agree the analogy is sound… it was, so far as I’m aware, essentially the first step taken, not a culmination of lesser steps.
Possibly. Eventually. And you’re right–we can restrain mundane criminals by imprisoning them. With mutant criminals, we are forced to construct ability-specific prison facilities (Eric Magnus’ cell comes to mind) at enormous expense. And even then, we cannot be absolutely certain they’ll work. A cell which protects against a primary ability might be vulnerable to a secondary. I agree that a device to restrain the X-factor itself might well be beneficial to society and the prison system.
But I think the Mutant-American community has a valid concern here. An effective and simple restraint collar could be very dangerous to the law-abiding members of the mutant community if widely obtained.
I am NOT saying “We should ignore danger B, because I’ve proven the existence of danger A”.
I am saying “Let’s focus on A. We know A is a clear and present danger. There is little proof that B is a danger”
Magneto is known to have killed. However, he is not known to have killed any one who was not either a threat to him, or actively trying to kill him at the time. The well known ‘flying cop car’ incident involved over a hundred police officers. Magneto could have easily killed them all. Instead there were only the most minor injuries. This is the man people hold up as representative of the threat posed by mutants?
That’s the thing though. Have we accurately quantified the risk? Have we proven that mutants pose more of a danger than non?
A good example would be muslim extremists. I think we’re all aware of what they’ve done. Last I knew we haven’t gone mosque to mosque asking all muslims to register in case they may be terrorists.
Flashing back a ways we have the Oklahoma City bombing. The two responsible had militia ties. We didn’t go around registering militia members as a potential threat.
I can even go downright silly and say that we haven’t asked that those that are bullied in high school or buy Marilyn Manson albums to register as potential school shooters.
Of course, Marilyn Manson listeners will be registered under the People Who Suck Registration Act, but that’s another thread entirely.
What we still have yet to hash out is that mutants are more of a threat than non mutants.
There is no such requirement. I don’t have to prove that giving a machine gun to an idiot will absolutely and certainly cause unfortunate results – only that it increases the risk of such an outcome to an unacceptable degree. My site qualifies rather nicely (so far as the gun issue is concerned), and thus refutes your claim that nobody can cite a real-world example of the phenomenon.
It would require more than proof that they pose more of a danger than not. It requires such a degree of general public benefit as to justify the imposition upon personal liberties. The American tradition, albeit inconsistently applied, is that the removal of personal rights requires a substantial societal benefit to justify it. How much benefit justifies how much imposition is the question. Plenty of historical precendences, but little consistency. Lots depends on the value one places on the degree of benefit and on the degree of imposition. That ancient New London property rights decision and The Patriot Act of the same era. The ability of motorcyclists to defend their right to crack their unhelmeted heads open and impose their rehab costs upon society. The 2013 Obesity Control Act forbidding all fast food sales and advertising to minors, mandating that all new city developments limit parking spaces in order to encourage walking to and from public transport, and requiring warning labels on TVs and game systems that use of more than one hour a day by minors is associated with obesity.
In this particular case it seems that the benefit garnered from registration is minimal, on the whole, but the potential for abuse of such registration is at least moderate. I’m against it.
BTW, on other boards discussion of this issue has frequently devolved into accusations that if you are not for this Act you must be a mutant in hiding. I am pleased that this discussion has not been so coarse. Although I did hear a rumour recently that the VP’s daughter is a mutant. Anyone know if that is true?
