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Author Topic:   Gun Control III
Hyroglyphx
Inactive Member


Message 797 of 1184 (852764)
05-16-2019 2:56 PM
Reply to: Message 790 by Percy
05-16-2019 2:02 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
The reality is that I would like a world where fewer bad things happen. That is well within our power.
I would like that too... I'm all ears as to suggestions.
You can't escape the fact that guns place one in more danger, not less.
I don't deny that and have never denied that. But they exist and the genie is out of the bottle. It really, really sucks that nuclear weapons exist... I hate that fact. But as it stands now the only real deterrence is also possessing them. Its an unfortunate reality and I would never say that it isn't unfortunate.
"Because the loaded gun was placed under the seat of the jeep, a boy found it and critically wounded his mother. Therefore get rid of the gun under the seat so that the boy shooting his mother cannot happen."
There is no "variable P."
You're arguing two different things. Follow that conversation and then get back to me when you've addressed the actual premise.
We agree that people are the real threat, and the better lethally armed the person the more mayhem. That's why we don't allow people to have tanks and bazookas, and why we shouldn't let them have guns, either.
Fine, lets slow things down then. Do you believe human beings have a fundamental right to protect themselves up and to include deadly force when deadly force is presented against them?
So someone's more likely to be killed if there's an accident with your gun? So that more people can be killed more quickly in a mass shooting?
You must find it terribly ironic then that the killers themselves are killed with guns.
You're arguing against yourself. Many things in life are dangerous, but except for guns we try to increase their safety.
That's not true, because nobody wants a gun to go off when it isn't supposed to. Manufacturers do add a lot of safety features to ensure that a gun only goes off when it is designed to. There's an incentive for that.
And except in certain circumstances (rare except for hunting), guns have no utility. Cars have high utilit but are especially dangerous, but look one more time at what all the effort on car safety has accomplished.
And cars will become even more safe when self-driving cars continue to improve. Maybe you'll be okay with guns when in the hands of Machine Learning. I'm curious how you feel about less lethal devices, like Tasers.
Not only does New Hampshire have lax gun laws, people aren't often held responsible for gun accidents. I've told the story before of the man cleaning his rifle at the kitchen table of his 2nd floor apartment when it went off, killing a man sleeping on his sofa in the apartment above. The New Hampshire Attorney General declined to press charges, deeming it an unfortunate accident.
It is an unfortunate accident, but it also happens to be manslaughter... I disagree with the AG's decision.
Adjacent regions have much more lax gun laws, rendering the laws in Chicago and Illinois ineffectual.
So gun laws don't stop criminals... Even if tomorrow we tried turning the entire US into the UK it would be a monumental disaster and one where the homicide rate would increase exponentially.
Along those lines I'm curious to hear how you would go about solving the gun problem.

"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 790 by Percy, posted 05-16-2019 2:02 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 801 by Percy, posted 05-18-2019 10:32 AM Hyroglyphx has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 798 of 1184 (852769)
05-16-2019 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 783 by Hyroglyphx
05-16-2019 12:34 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
Hyglyphx writes:
My point, which was "quite obvious" if you read it, was that any good argument has a counter-argument.
This is from an earlier post, but you just addressed it with PaulK again, so I wanted to reemphasize what a poor argument this is. Every good argument does not have a good counterargument. Let's say someone argues that oxygen is essential to human life. It's a fact, there's no counterargument. Lots of arguments are irrefutable that way.
Do you honestly believe I've never heard of a story where a kid shoots himself with a gun? You're missing the entire point... which is by that fact, alone, should it dictate the fate of gun ownership. That's Percy's ENTIRE premise, is it not?
No, it is not my entire premise, and the recent story was about a boy shooting his mother, not himself. Incidents like these, as well as incidents where guns are successfully used for self defense, are the facts upon which the statistics are built. And the statistics tell us that a gun makes one less safe, significantly so, not more. There just aren't enough murderers out there to make up the difference.
Do I need to pull up a random article of someone using a gun to kill an intruder in order to justify the logic of it? That's an incredibly cowardly way to debate, Paul... instead of attacking the substance of an argument, you set off looking for strawmen to set on fire.
We likely all agree that we should be focusing on the substance, but from where the rest of us sit you seem to be having trouble recognizing substance when you see it. You say you accept the statistics and then fail to comprehend what a proper rebuttal would require (hint: statistics and facts). Accusing people of making what-if arguments (when they haven't) and asserting that all arguments have valid counterarguments (when they obviously don't) and just generally making invalid arguments is the opposite of focusing on substance.
Oh, its not a hypothetical, its a real story!!! Uh, yeah, I am aware, just as some people who aren't armed are murdered have real stories attached to a theoretical philosophy stemming from it.
And armed people are also murdered. Back in the good old days mafioso were murdered all the time, and every one of them was likely armed, not to mention on their guard. The fact remains that your odds (or those of someone you know) of dying by firearm increase when you purchase a gun.
The underlying argument based on that story IS hypothetical. Because of this happening, that ought to happen in response.
You're again being illogical, and you're also not capturing what other people are arguing. No one is arguing that anything *ought* to happen in response to purchasing a gun or being a careless with a gun. Your use of the word *ought* is completely out of place. What is being argued is that it increases your chances of being hurt or killed by a firearm, and this is what the statistics show.
what benefits does gun ownership offer society to offset the cost. I don’t see that we lost anything worth having here.
Why don't you ask the military that question?
A more fundamental question is why you think the military is relevant in this discussion. Do you see anyone here advocating for disarming the military?
A law or a fundamental right without any teeth is useless. At some point force will have to be applied some of the time. That's just the way life is.
This is expressed so generally that I don't think anyone would take much issue if any with it, but it doesn't address points anyone is making.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Punctuation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 783 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-16-2019 12:34 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 799 of 1184 (852805)
05-17-2019 8:13 AM
Reply to: Message 791 by Hyroglyphx
05-16-2019 2:05 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
Hyroglyphx writes:
Haha, yeah, okay... So a gun has no use?
I have a slightly different answer than Ringo. Yes, sometimes a gun is useful. Hunting is one example.
I imagine the efficacy of an army armed with only flower power.
There you go again. Why do you say stuff like this? What does the military have to do with civilian gun control? If Congress were to pass a complete ban on all guns tomorrow how would that affect the military, which operates under its own rules.
By the way, the military has very tight gun control. Training is required, not optional as it is for civilians. Guns when not in use are always locked up. Ammunition is strictly inventoried.
I'm thinking it is needed when people are trying to kill you. What exactly is your plan if you face such a scenario?
Well, yes, what exactly is your plan? Thugs have just broken down your front door and are pointing guns at you while shouting "You gonna die, sucka" (happens all the time, I'm sure). Your gun is in a lockbox in the bedroom. Your ammunition is in a lockbox in the home office. What, exactly, is your plan?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 791 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-16-2019 2:05 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 800 of 1184 (852810)
05-17-2019 10:06 AM
Reply to: Message 795 by Hyroglyphx
05-16-2019 2:34 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
Hyroglyphx writes:
Ah, so, if I implant a SINGLE murder story that could have been avoided if they were armed, I suddenly validate the whole premise of gun ownership based on that single example? We use examples to defend or a elucidate a deeper philosophical point... which is what Percy was trying to do and which is perfectly fine to do. But what you're suggesting is that I must now only discuss that particular case. I wonder if the same logic will apply if I give a real-world scenario of a murder case.
Statistics, facts, data make the case. The stories I post only make the point that the murder and mayhem continues while gun nuts stonewall.
That would be better but still poor. Percy’s point is these events are inevitable given widespread gun ownership and they don’t all happen to involve “idiots”.
Yeah, and murder is inevitable too but we still pass legislation against it... I mean, seriously... what is your point?
The oft-described point is that normal average people (which is most people) will inevitably make mistakes, have accidents, or become angry, despondent or mentally ill. The widespread availability of guns makes the expression of these human foibles deadly.
You really did dismiss Percy’s point as a “hypothetical scenario” which could be countered by inventing your own. That is the “substance”.
The story is real, the moral behind it is hypothetical and debatable.
You keep saying you accept the statistics, but you really don't. If you did then you would understand that gun possession increasing mortality risk is a reality, not a hypothetical.
quote:
The underlying argument based on that story IS hypothetical. Because of this happening, that ought to happen in response.
That doesn’t even make sense.
The purpose of Percy sharing that story serves as an illustration of why people should not privately own weapons. A child can't shoot themselves without the gun, ergo if you introduce the gun you are responsible for the outcome... ergo guns should not be privately owned. How's that?
This is only partially accurate. Our culture of guns tells people that guns make them safer, therefore you can't really hold individuals responsible when they think of safety instead of danger when they think of guns. It tells them to think of shooting criminals when they hold their gun instead of pondering the risk of hurting or killing themselves or someone in their family or one of their friends or neighbors. When the luck of the draw says that today is the day that they'll be insufficiently careful or accident-free or sane, an unneeded death can be the result.
You seem to believe that guns have zero utility.... I'm asking how that would work for an unarmed military force.
You're raising the military yet again? I think you should save this canned response for someone advocating disarming the military. Good luck finding such a person.
Obviously guns do have a place in society, for however unfortunate that reality may be. As to your country, the one that has headlines about its "knife epidemic," only serves to prove that in the absence of guns people find other ways to kill people... which brings it all back to my central point that the true underlying issue is why people feel compelled to kill in the first place.
You keep bringing up the same points. This has been answered before. If is far easier to kill with a gun than a knife, plus guns can be used to cause death impulsively and instantly while knives usually cannot. The murder rate (all methods) in the US is 5.35, in the UK 1.20.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 795 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-16-2019 2:34 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 801 of 1184 (852851)
05-18-2019 10:32 AM
Reply to: Message 797 by Hyroglyphx
05-16-2019 2:56 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
Hyroglyphx writes:
The reality is that I would like a world where fewer bad things happen. That is well within our power.
I would like that too... I'm all ears as to suggestions.
Get rid of the guns.
You can't escape the fact that guns place one in more danger, not less.
I don't deny that and have never denied that. But they exist and the genie is out of the bottle. It really, really sucks that nuclear weapons exist... I hate that fact. But as it stands now the only real deterrence is also possessing them. Its an unfortunate reality and I would never say that it isn't unfortunate.
And yet the world engages in significant efforts at nuclear arms control (like the treaty with Iran that Trump stupidly withdrew from and that has led to the current situation of increased risk of war with Iran). Why shouldn't the US make equally determined efforts at arms control for guns?
Just because we know how to make a nuclear bomb or a gun doesn't mean we have to actually make them and possess them and point them at populations and people.
"Because the loaded gun was placed under the seat of the jeep, a boy found it and critically wounded his mother. Therefore get rid of the gun under the seat so that the boy shooting his mother cannot happen."
There is no "variable P."
You're arguing two different things. Follow that conversation and then get back to me when you've addressed the actual premise.
He said as if he actually had a premise. What is your premise, pray tell?
Your point made no sense. Follow the argument and make an actual point. The reality is that if a gun had not been under the seat of the jeep the boy could not have shot his mother. There is no "variable P". You're saying things that have no apparent meaning, or possibly you severely lack clarity.
We agree that people are the real threat, and the better lethally armed the person the more mayhem. That's why we don't allow people to have tanks and bazookas, and why we shouldn't let them have guns, either.
Fine, lets slow things down then.
What you mean is, "I'm going to ignore your comment and go off in a new direction." Do you understand that statistics tell us a gun is much more likely to be used against yourself, a family member, a friend, or someone nearby, than against a criminal? Do you understand that people are imperfect and that mistakes committed with deadly weapons can be, well, deadly?
Do you believe human beings have a fundamental right to protect themselves up to and including deadly force when deadly force is presented against them?
Addressing your change of topic, if they've got a gun and are threatening to kill you, and you've got a gun, too, then sure, go for it, defend yourself. But you still don't seem to understand how incredibly unlikely this scenario is compared to scenarios like the gun going off while cleaning your gun or showing someone your gun or loading your gun or demonstrating your gun or getting angry at someone or growing despondent or becoming mentally ill or just having an unfortunate accident.
How are you imagining that your scenario happens with any meaningful frequency? Let's say someone wants to kill you. You're fully armed, gun on your hip, ready to draw at an instant's notice. At a moment of their choosing someone approaches you from behind on the street, puts a gun to your head, pulls the trigger, then walks away and disappears into the crowd.
Or let's say you're at home watching television when someone suddenly breaks down your door and points a gun at you. Is your gun still on your hip or maybe in your lap? Then you draw and fire. Good for you. You were prepared for just this situation and you came through unscathed.
Or is your gun in a drawer? That's not very safe, is it, but let's say when you got home after your day of open carry you placed the gun in a drawer. Can you get to it in time?
Or when you got home did you place the gun in a lockbox in one room and the ammunition in another lockbox in another, which is what all gun safety classes insist you should do. I think you're screwed.
So someone's more likely to be killed if there's an accident with your gun? So that more people can be killed more quickly in a mass shooting?
You must find it terribly ironic then that the killers themselves are killed with guns.
Why would I find that ironic? As you know, since I assume your memory isn't defective, I've advocated placing guns in the hands of specially trained units. It isn't a matter of whether gun violence is dealt with using guns, but whether we have specially trained and competent units to deal with gun violence (see the Police Shootings thread for many examples of the dire consequences of an armed police force).
Everything you say you've said before. Repetition doesn't render fallacies true. You've also already seen the answers before. You're like a chess player who doesn't even plan one move ahead, who just pushes pieces and in subsequent games keeps repeating the same mistakes. Maybe popping in occasionally isn't a good approach for you.
You're arguing against yourself. Many things in life are dangerous, but except for guns we try to increase their safety.
That's not true,...
Of course it's true that we're not trying to make guns safer, which would have to be where it counts, through legislation. You really need to work on your consistency. First you argue for the legitimacy of existing efforts at gun lethality, then you claim the opposite that there are efforts to increase gun safety. Where are these efforts? Where's the legislation to require that guns be keyed to fingerprints or faces or retina patterns, that they must be made so they can't be adjusted to make them more "hair-trigger," and that they must be somehow keyed so they can't accept the more lethal forms of ammunition (at least not without a special license), and so forth, just for a few ideas for how government could make guns safer, in a manner similar to how they made cars safer.
Biofire makes a fingerprint-keyed gun. iGun Technology has a gun keyed to a ring with a chip in it. Armatix GmbH keys their gun to a watch. Are you in favor of government requiring that all guns have some sort of lockout feature like these?
When Armatix GmbH tried to sell their gun in the US they soon ceased their efforts due to an outcry from gun-rights advocates because of concerns about things like a New Jersey law that says that within three years of a smart gun being commercially available that all guns in the state must be smart guns.
Smart guns are expensive. For example, the Armatix GmbH gun cost $1300, and several hundred dollars more for the watch. What is a life worth? Is it worth less than making guns easily affordable?
Self defense advocates will always argue against smarts guns. "They cost too much, what if the battery runs out just as I need it, what if the 1 second it takes to recognize my fingerprint is the 1 second I need to save my life,..." And so on.
...because nobody wants a gun to go off when it isn't supposed to.
Of course no one wants a gun to go off unintentionally, yet many people ignore this desire and make their guns more "hair-trigger." People are often irrational and inconsistent. It's one of the reasons why people shouldn't have guns.
Manufacturers do add a lot of safety features to ensure that a gun only goes off when it is designed to. There's an incentive for that.
Really. So how come a boy was able to reach under the seat of a jeep, pull out a gun, and shoot his mother?
And except in certain circumstances (rare except for hunting), guns have no utility. Cars have high utility but are especially dangerous, but look one more time at what all the effort on car safety has accomplished.
And cars will become even more safe when self-driving cars continue to improve. Maybe you'll be okay with guns when in the hands of Machine Learning.
The method of lockout isn't as important as the concept being accepted by gun nuts. As I described above, smart guns are viewed very suspiciously and skeptically by gun nuts.
I'm curious how you feel about less lethal devices, like Tasers.
Aren't Tasers wielded by the same insufficiently trained and imperfect people who wield guns? Of course the much reduced lethality of Tasers makes them much less a concern, but reports of misuse of Tasers abound, like the case of a visiting non-English speaking elderly mother getting tased while picking flowers but being unresponsive to police orders. Taser training and guidelines state that the mother was above the threshold age for tasing. That she was elderly was visually obvious. She survived but spent time in the hospital.
And the lawyer for murdered Pamela Turner is speaking out. See Message 224 for the latest developments. Not a pretty picture of our finest.
Not only does New Hampshire have lax gun laws, people aren't often held responsible for gun accidents. I've told the story before of the man cleaning his rifle at the kitchen table of his 2nd floor apartment when it went off, killing a man sleeping on his sofa in the apartment above. The New Hampshire Attorney General declined to press charges, deeming it an unfortunate accident.
It is an unfortunate accident, but it also happens to be manslaughter... I disagree with the AG's decision.
There was no public outrage at the AG's decision.
Adjacent regions have much more lax gun laws, rendering the laws in Chicago and Illinois ineffectual.
So gun laws don't stop criminals...
Strict nationwide gun control would make it more difficult for criminals to obtain weapons.
Even if tomorrow we tried turning the entire US into the UK it would be a monumental disaster and one where the homicide rate would increase exponentially.
You're merely repeating the same false scaremongering you've repeated many times before.
Along those lines I'm curious to hear how you would go about solving the gun problem.
Get rid of the guns.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 797 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-16-2019 2:56 PM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 809 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-21-2019 2:49 PM Percy has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 802 of 1184 (852880)
05-19-2019 1:10 PM


Voters in Switzerland have backed a tightening of gun laws to conform with European Union regulations.
Almost 64% of voters in Sunday's referendum supported tougher restrictions on semi-automatic and automatic weapons, final results show.
Switzerland gun control: Voters back EU regulations - BBC News
It *is* possible

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 803 of 1184 (852894)
05-20-2019 8:21 AM


T-Shirt Opportunity
Source: ebay
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 804 by vimesey, posted 05-20-2019 12:44 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 805 by ringo, posted 05-20-2019 12:49 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
vimesey
Member
Posts: 1398
From: Birmingham, England
Joined: 09-21-2011


Message 804 of 1184 (852901)
05-20-2019 12:44 PM
Reply to: Message 803 by Percy
05-20-2019 8:21 AM


Re: T-Shirt Opportunity
One response I've always thought would be useful to promote is this:
Guns don't kill people - people kill people.
Maybe, but guns sure do make it a whooooooole shit load easier to do so.

Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 803 by Percy, posted 05-20-2019 8:21 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
ringo
Member (Idle past 411 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(1)
Message 805 of 1184 (852902)
05-20-2019 12:49 PM
Reply to: Message 803 by Percy
05-20-2019 8:21 AM


Re: T-Shirt Opportunity
If you think guns don't kill people, try killing forty people with a spoon.

Izquierdo.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 803 by Percy, posted 05-20-2019 8:21 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
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Pressie
Member
Posts: 2103
From: Pretoria, SA
Joined: 06-18-2010


Message 806 of 1184 (852943)
05-21-2019 8:29 AM
Reply to: Message 805 by ringo
05-20-2019 12:49 PM


Re: T-Shirt Opportunity
Thanks, this was really funny.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 805 by ringo, posted 05-20-2019 12:49 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
Hyroglyphx
Inactive Member


Message 807 of 1184 (853007)
05-21-2019 2:13 PM
Reply to: Message 796 by PaulK
05-16-2019 2:50 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
The mosque shooter in New Zealand went there precisely because New Zealand has less restrictive gun laws than Australia, which nicely illustrates the point.
And what point is that - that crazy people are sometimes determined to find ways of behaving like assholes?
I live in Austin. We had a serial bomber about a year ago. He purchased perfectly legal items to construct bombs. Are you suggesting that its the fault of society or legislators for selling those items legally? My issue with many gun control proponents is that they seize upon a tragedy as an opportunity to go after the gun instead of placing the blame where it actually belongs.
You're also blaming New Zealand law and contrasting it with Australia to make a baseless assertion that gun laws actually prevent crazy people from obtaining or using those weapons. Utter nonsense. Russia has some of the strictest gun laws imaginable and their rate of homicide is off the charts. French laws on gun ownership is tightly regulated, but it didn't stop terrorists wielding AK-47's on the streets of Paris.

"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 796 by PaulK, posted 05-16-2019 2:50 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 808 by PaulK, posted 05-21-2019 2:46 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied
 Message 810 by Taq, posted 05-21-2019 4:57 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 808 of 1184 (853009)
05-21-2019 2:46 PM
Reply to: Message 807 by Hyroglyphx
05-21-2019 2:13 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
quote:
And what point is that - that crazy people are sometimes determined to find ways of behaving like assholes?
Try reading in context. Restricting the means of killing does make it more difficult for the crazies.
quote:
I live in Austin. We had a serial bomber about a year ago. He purchased perfectly legal items to construct bombs. Are you suggesting that its the fault of society or legislators for selling those items legally? My issue with many gun control proponents is that they seize upon a tragedy as an opportunity to go after the gun instead of placing the blame where it actually belongs.
I am suggesting that society weighs up the pros and cons of allowing said items to be sold. I wouldn’t be surprised if the arithmetic came out rather better for those items than it does for guns.
And, in fact, we do restrict many potentially dangerous items far more now than we did when I was young.
quote:
You're also blaming New Zealand law and contrasting it with Australia to make a baseless assertion that gun laws actually prevent crazy people from obtaining or using those weapons.
I never said prevent. But certainly Australian gun law was restrictive enough that the “crazy” person decided to go elsewhere, even though it was obviously less convenient in other ways, and I’m sure he’d rather have done his murdering in Australia.
quote:
Russia has some of the strictest gun laws imaginable and their rate of homicide is off the charts. French laws on gun ownership is tightly regulated, but it didn't stop terrorists wielding AK-47's on the streets of Paris.
If this New Republic article is accurate, Russians are allowed to carry rifles for “self defence” ! Also, the laws aren’t that well enforced with about twice as many illegal guns as legal.
As for France I never said that gun laws were a panacea, and a well organised terrorist cell should be able to obtain weapons that are not that easily be available. But death from terrorist attack is hardly the only or the most important issue here.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 807 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-21-2019 2:13 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
Hyroglyphx
Inactive Member


Message 809 of 1184 (853010)
05-21-2019 2:49 PM
Reply to: Message 801 by Percy
05-18-2019 10:32 AM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
Get rid of the guns.
I'd love to hear how you propose disarming a nation of over 350 million gun-toting citizens deeply ingrained in the 2nd Amendment that, statistically, own twice as many guns as there are people.... oh, and all with a police force that you disarmed.
Maybe this concept is lost on you, but the very people that choose professions involving firearms (military, police, etc) where do you think they land on the socio-political spectrum when it comes to private ownership of guns?
You can write whatever laws you want, Percy, but without someone like me in the trenches enforcing those laws, they're useless in practical terms.
Will try to get the rest of your premises when time permits.

"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 801 by Percy, posted 05-18-2019 10:32 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 812 by Percy, posted 05-21-2019 6:26 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 810 of 1184 (853025)
05-21-2019 4:57 PM
Reply to: Message 807 by Hyroglyphx
05-21-2019 2:13 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
Hyroglphx writes:
My issue with many gun control proponents is that they seize upon a tragedy as an opportunity to go after the gun instead of placing the blame where it actually belongs.
That would seem to be what the pro-grun lobby does. They seize on a burglar entering someone's home as an opportunity to push for greater access to guns.
You're also blaming New Zealand law and contrasting it with Australia to make a baseless assertion that gun laws actually prevent crazy people from obtaining or using those weapons. Utter nonsense. Russia has some of the strictest gun laws imaginable and their rate of homicide is off the charts. French laws on gun ownership is tightly regulated, but it didn't stop terrorists wielding AK-47's on the streets of Paris.
By that same logic, we should throw out every law since almost every law has been broken. We have laws against murder, but people still commit murder, so let's get rid of that law. People still steal stuff even though it is against the law, so let's get rid of it.
Does this make much sense to you?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 807 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-21-2019 2:13 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 811 by Theodoric, posted 05-21-2019 5:40 PM Taq has not replied
 Message 813 by Percy, posted 05-21-2019 6:32 PM Taq has not replied

  
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 811 of 1184 (853026)
05-21-2019 5:40 PM
Reply to: Message 810 by Taq
05-21-2019 4:57 PM


Re: Is a lifetime of due diligence even possible?
By that same logic, we should throw out every law since almost every law has been broken. We have laws against murder, but people still commit murder, so let's get rid of that law. People still steal stuff even though it is against the law, so let's get rid of it.
That is the fallacious argument discussed in the websites I posted that Hyro dismissed out of hand.
quote:
Not only is this conservative sound-bite irrelevant to gun reform discussion, it’s also socially untenable and dangerously nave. If we were to accept that a law is justified only if it has a 100% compliance rate (this is, necessarily, the logical extension of any position that renounces legal reform under the pretense that ”criminals don’t obey laws’), then we could systematically dismantle every existing law until nothing remains but the state of nature. Laws against murder, rape, and theft would be abandoned out of fear that criminals wouldn’t follow them, and that they would thus hurt law-abiding citizens who ostensibly murder, rape, and thieve out of self-defense. Taking this argument to its logical endpoint, even the most hardened of libertarians would be reticent to accept a world where property crimes can be used to abrogate property rights.
Not to mention that there are already plenty of weapons that have been banned which criminals aren’t using- RPGs, machine guns, anti-tank weapons, surface-to-air missiles, and so on. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that criminals automatically have a desire to use said weapons, or have access to a black market that could supply them.
Rebutting the ‘Criminals don’t follow laws’ and ‘Gun Control only hurts law-abiding citizens’ argument against gun control – Armed With Reason
Edited by Theodoric, : Clarification

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 810 by Taq, posted 05-21-2019 4:57 PM Taq has not replied

  
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