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Author | Topic: Gun Control III | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
No. Wrong. That is not a correction. That is a different and irrelevant, to Percy's statement, data point. Cars are likely to never be involved in a major accident, but we still legislate safety controls in case they are. which is why being in the insurance business is profitable. But it sure is nice to have when its needed. The point Percy is trying to ultimately make is that guns are too dangerous to have. He states that it is more likely that they be used maliciously against a family member or one involved in an accidental shooting versus being used to defend a home/person. I actually agree that it is more likely given the statistics. But there's another statistic, and that is far more likely that a gun never hurts anyone ever. And we can know this rather definitively by noting that there are more guns in the United States than there are citizens. He's rather selective by using an outlier and pretending that its a norm.
But we can not require gun owners to have liability insurance? Kind of hurting your own argument with that statement. I think you misunderstand my premise. The gun itself is the insurance policy, safeguarding against people that would try to hurt them. Its like insurance in the sense that you hope to god you never have to use it, but are glad its there in the event you do.
That your argument has no validity is shown by the continuing trotting out of this widely debunked and discredited argument. The gun laws in IL are not prohibitively restrictive. State lines do not stop guns. WI and IN have very lax gun laws. Comparing Chicago to New Hampshire is never a legitimate argument. https://www.npr.org/...hicago-proof-that-gun-laws-don-t-work I appreciate you making the point for me... that gun laws have no impact on criminals or criminality that use them. That's exactly right, state lines do not prevent guns. The only ones it hurts are the very people you'd want to be armed and not the intended target, which are people that would use them maliciously. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
No, it certainly isn’t obvious that that was your point. You know I was willing to believe you didn’t read Percy’s post carefully and simply assumed that he was talking hypothetically. And apologising for that mistake would have been a good response. This is just digging yourself deeper. 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? 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. 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. The underlying argument based on that story IS hypothetical. Because of this happening, that ought to happen in response.
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 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. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
The flaw in that analogy being that insurance is less likely to kill your children. I'm not sure what your argument is, can you expound?
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
It's the same as the argument against, "Cars kill more people than guns." A car is useful, maybe necessary; a gun is not. Insurance is useful, maybe necessary; a gun is not. Haha, yeah, okay... So a gun has no use? I imagine the efficacy of an army armed with only flower power.
To quote you again: "But then, insurance is more likely to never be used at all... which is why being in the insurance business is profitable. But it sure is nice to have when its needed." A gun is never "needed". More often than not, it is a detriment rather than an asset. Never needed.... except when it is. I'm thinking it is needed when people are trying to kill you. What exactly is your plan if you face such a scenario? Read them passages from Gandhi about the philosophy of pacifism and hope they have a sudden change of heart?"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
As I said that statistic is irrelevant. Using this argument we should give every person even children guns and not regulate them at all because statistically even less of a % will be used to hurt anyone. I never said I disagreed with gun legislation or even gun control. There are certain government safety standards for many things and I am for that, within reason.
The old canard that guns don't hurt anyone people do. Logically it is a stupid argument. That's actually a fact. A gun has never willed itself to kill anyone.
It is a stupid premise. Thank you.
An insurance policy does not protect your from things happening. It reimburses you for the financial cost. In no way is that similar to using a gun. I appreciate you making the point for me... that gun laws have no impact on criminals or criminality that use them. If you don't like that analogy, then use a seatbelt which doesn't reimburse you either. We wear seatbelts thousands of times when it wasn't necessary to do so in hindsight. But we still wear them because we cannot predict the exact moment we would need them.
No I did not make that argument. Not intentionally, I would agree that, but inadvertently you did... and I thank you for it.
Here are two articles filled with original source material that I am sure you will not even bother to consider. You're not reinventing the wheel and neither is the website. I have a retort for all of them. And its not that you or the website don't raise interesting questions, its just that when its all said and done, there is no response as to how you would curb violence directed to you without them to even the playing field. Your alternative is.... death.... or serious bodily injury. Make that decision for you, not the rest of us. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Even if it was - and it isn’t - responding with a self-serving “hypothetical scenario” is still a lousy answer. Playing “what-if” games is no way to deal with facts. 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.
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?
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.
quote: 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?
And you still make no sense. Why would the military have any special insight ? The fact that I am living in a country with highly restrictive firearms laws and no signs of any serious ill-effects from that surely speaks louder than anything the military could say. You seem to believe that guns have zero utility.... I'm asking how that would work for an unarmed military force. 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. Edited by Admin, : Fix first quote."Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Licensing that requires periodic renewal, say every five years just like for a driver's license, would have caught this man's problems years ago. Gun licensing should be required in all 50 states and all territories. How would you propose going about enforcing it when the people enforcing the law aren't armed either? Laws are useless without enforcement."Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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