Yorzhik said:
I don't insist you mean something else. I respond to what you write.
Town Heretic said:
You do on both counts. That you are incapable of seeing that is also something I won't debate, but invite anyone slogging through this to determine. I'm comfortable your work underscores my contention.
Yorzhik said:
But as we see in the comment immediately above, what you consider me misreading is just you being wrong.
Town Heretic said:
No, but it's like you to think that.
It's not what I like to think, it was shown by example in the quote immediately above.
Seventeen people died today so you could sport a weapon vastly superior to any the Founders had to consider when they wrote the right into our national fabric. Now I'll admit my breech loaders are also superior, but darn hard to kill dozens of people with.
You underestimate murderer Cruz. If he had used breech loaders to kill just 5 or 10, you would now be calling for a new ban. And yet, murdering with guns still wouldn't stop like it doesn't in countries with stronger gun restrictions. Yet, every murder would have you calling for stricter bans while violence and murder rates would go up (even though gun-violence and gun-homicide might go down).
Show some wisdom and virtue by trying to stop the problem instead of blaming an inanimate object, and taking things away from people who are not to blame for the problem you perceive.
Are you saying that admitting a good point is comparable to admitting oneself wrong? That you can't note a good point that you simply agree with and which doesn't materially alter your position? Also, didn't I particularly note the whole drugs/black market mea culpa?
Good point. I am wrong that you've never admitted I made a good point in this discussion since you realized you were wrong about the black market vs. reselling stolen but legal goods.
Because of your error I'm not saying you should stop your campaign to ban semi-auto guns for people (that don't use them for their jobs). But what it does mean is that my point that getting rid of black markets would do more to save lives than your gun restriction.
Yorzhik said:
This would be one of those times because what is allowed to defend one's self depends on it.
Town Heretic said:
If the definition of self defense is for people to defend themselves without the help of the government, that would include the most efficient way to do it that the people in question find. That currently happens to be with semi-autos. Using anything less would mean more training required, and less effectiveness on top of that. Using anything more would mean less effectiveness for more money. The easiest way to answer the question is: what, in general, would be used if the government didn't have a say in the matter?
As Nihilo said, the most efficient option for a single body to defend themselves is the current standard issue rifle used by the military. That's why it's the best option for self defense.
Now, if the definition of self defense includes relying on the government for protection from an imminent threat, then single shot weapons would be within that definition. That would also include the government deciding that sticks are the most lethal form of self defense allowed since they would draw the line on what level of weapon is allowed at their whim, not on the most efficient means of self defense.
You tried that already. If I'm talking about having a way to thwart cancer, saying that my not considering other diseases isn't a rebuttal. Never was and never will be.
This would be *another* example of your inability to read charitably. What I said is that for the analogy to be correct, thwarting the disease would have to act the same as attempting to thwart a human. So to make the analogy correct, you would have to say that curing cancer would have cancer finding other ways to kill you (saying other diseases would do more killing is essentially the same in the context of the analogy).
You have to literally believe, as I've noted prior, that ease of access has no impact, that everyone dead by mass shooters would have been killed some other way.
NO impact? EVERYONE? Are you sure I've said that? Can you quote me?
Not only have I said that confiscating people's guns will have an impact on gun violence, but Stripe and Nihilo have said so as well. There is literally no one on this thread that has engaged substantially with your proposal that hasn't admitted an impact. "In other news, water is wet."
What I've said was that there is no way to measure it. And you've admitted that. And I've said it will do more harm than good with good supporting evidence.
Actually, what the data shows is that every Western democracy that tries what I'm talking about has success stopping what I'm looking to stop. It also demonstrates that states with tougher gun laws to a much better job of stemming gun violence.
What we know is that murder rates don't change much after a ban/restriction. That means they didn't have success in terms of overall violence and homicide. And that's what the people think they were getting when bans and restrictions are imposed.
With you? Sure. And you've had the same goofy notions since you typed your first response. Anyone who has considered the problem seriously should have a pretty firm opinion/position by now.
The difference being that I actually looked up your evidence and considered it. I presented evidence that showed your position was wrong and you ignored it.
You've raised that flag a few times. The first time I challenged you demonstrate that quoting me and you didn't. Then I put a couple of lines from you that were entirely that. For some reason you've decided to try that tactic again, but it's just as wrong and I'm not going to do more than note it...or if I have time later go back and reprint that.
I have no problem with considering or using emotional arguments. What I'm saying is that your foundation is based entirely on emotion, because you argue only gun violence instead of violence in general and also you blame violence and homicide on the vague notion of being poor. While I use emotional arguments directly against your emotional arguments, my foundation for believing what I believe is based in the dialectic - science, tradition, pragmatism, and God's word.
The only meaningful distinction between them is the number of bullets you can fire in short order. The Founders were writing about weapons inferior to the ones that fit my description in every way.
The founders do not grant your right to self defense. What they considered a gun is irrelevant in this context.
The difference between being able to shoot only once per reload or more per reload is huge. You don't think it's a big difference in terms of defending one's self?
And the Founders believed them sufficient to protect the right. Ours are even better.
The founders didn't grant the right. And semi-autos are even better than today's single shot guns. Machine guns and tanks and bombs are not better than a semi-auto for general self defense.
The Founders were right. You can defend yourself with a breech loader. Or if you can't, you shouldn't even own a slingshot.
You can defend yourself better with a semi-auto, and easier too. And training with a semi-auto is easier, too. So your statement is just plain wrong.
No, the point is that everything those weapons could accomplish is bettered by the weapons I support.
Your point is irrelevant based on current technology.
And none of the weapons I support would be responsible for Las Vegas, or the latest mass murder by a jackanape with an AR-15.
And confiscating the weapons you propose will make no difference to the murder rate. And whatever means jackanapes use to murder will have to be met with another ban on your part because you aren't interested in solving the problem - you're only interested in blaming people that aren't responsible for the problem as a bandaid.
Nothing in my position is inconsistent.
You are correct. You are consistent within the context you have defined, which is not always wrong to do, but that does not always mean an idea is correct. Where you go wrong is that your consistency fails in the bigger context of reality - homicides are not defined by the tool used to do them.
This is exactly why your proposals fail the same way the courts fail when it comes to laws against murdering unborn children. Within the context of *women's* rights, they are consistent. But reality dictates they should have always been in the context of *human* rights. Likewise, you should understand your proposal in the context of homicide and violence, but that would make you inconsistent within the context of gun-violence and gun-homicide.
I also believe armies should have tanks. You shouldn't. And policemen and those who drive other emergency vehicles should have the ability to violate the speeding laws that restrain us. Because I approach the restriction of right via reason, not some dogmatic slavery to a principle that mocks reason.
Principles support reason, so what principle are you talking about here that mocks reason?
Tanks are worse for general self defense than a semi-auto. So are full automatics, bombs, sticks, and single shot guns. You could make tanks and full automatics legal for people to own, and almost no one would own them for self defense.
Also, there was a situation here recently where a choking child was rushed to the hospital at breakneck speed by the child's father. Nothing was done legally for speeding and the child was saved. So, no, you are not correct that we are always restricted.
Yeah, that's like blaming the law for criminals. Work that out at some point. You've been too ridiculous on it for me to do much more than point you in a rational direction.
Of course bad law creates criminals. That's why murder and slavery is intrinsic to socialism/communism. That's why people that *agree* it's OK to murder babies before they are born, even if they don't murder or have their babies murdered, will cause the same societal breakdown that tolerance for any murder would.
And that you think there is no rational argument that laws can create criminals is just another example of your mindset that only certain opinions are allowed to be discussed.
I don't believe you're stupid. But when you do something as grotesquely stupid as repeatedly stating I'm for child prostitution, etc., I think that's both a reasonable and restrained response. Don't like it? Say something rational and better.
I said what I did to get you off of your index card of allowable opinion. You don't even think of the consequences of child labor laws because in your mind no one can make a good point against them. But then Paul Krugman did. And the reason his point was a good one is because child labor laws not only negatively affect families in extreme poverty, but it affects affluent western families negatively too, for the same reasons.
Without showing you what happens at the end of your thinking, you would never even consider consequences less than prostitution and maiming.
No, I never have. And that makes you delusional or dishonest on the point.
Supra
No good lawyer would make that statement. But it sounds like something you would. Again, the high 90s are settled between parents without the court having interjected. You can try to spin that any way you want, but the system isn't deciding the rule.
I have to admit, when you say 90% of divorces never even make it to court, that does not support my assertion. But it doesn't line up with popular thinking, either. So I'd like to look more into this and look at your data. Are courts not involved in 90% of custody cases? Or their only involvement is just to record what the divorcing parents decide in 90% of the custody cases? Is court-ordered child support only in 10% of custody cases?
Yorzhik said:
Even so, the best option would be for children to default to the custody of the father in every divorce case.
Town Heretic said:
Popular, it isn't even rational. So you've got bigger fish to fry.
It's rational according to science, tradition, common sense, and God's opinion. It only seems irrational to you because it isn't on your index card of allowable opinion.
Did you use one adjusted and one unadjusted set of figures? :think: In the mid 70s you could get a loaded Mustang for less than 4k. You know what that costs us today?
Both graphs were inflation adjusted.
No, you're missing my point. I've said prior that automatic is a desperate measure and inferior except as a means of last ditch defense.
I got your point. Thanks for making mine. People defending themselves don't expect to get into a situation where they need automatic fire. In fact, people would consider automatic fire a bad thing for their purposes and just wouldn't buy it for self defense. Therefore, you don't even need laws against such guns because, in general, people wouldn't want them. This would not be the same in the context of single-shot relative to semi-auto.
No, that's not what I wrote either. You're on a roll. Well, I suppose you're way to the left or right of a roll.
It's exactly what you wrote. I pointed out that we shouldn't be so sure the government will always be not-too-bad.
When a government goes bad, for some reason, even though their army would have no problem defeating the armed masses, they want to disarm said masses anyway. Don't you think that's odd? But for whatever odd reason they don't want the masses to have guns, wisdom would dictate we do the opposite.
And we can agree our government is currently not too bad. The people they murder through commission and omission isn't so frequent or out in the open that it's on everyone's mind daily. But once you take everyone's gun, neither a bad government or a not-too-bad government is going to ever let people get them back again. And since it doesn't make any difference to violence or homicide, better to keep the guns in the hands that a bad government doesn't want them in if it ever comes to that.
Will it ever come to that? It did in other countries and started down that road in ours more than once. At least my ideas can be implemented a little at a time (and being able to measure the success of an idea with each little step). And reversal is easy if an idea doesn't work.
Your ideas are irreversible, and so you better be 100% sure the government cannot go bad, and that homicide and violence will go down in a measurable way before you pull the trigger on your idea.
Yeah, I've addressed the black helicopter paranoia fantasy in potential and compared it to the very real and present harm. Or, as a man once said to the German army, "Nuts."
And your elitist bubble of a life that leads you to ignore any evidence that the government might go bad is why your ideas lack wisdom and virtue.
lain: That's my subtle way of suggesting that declaring yourself right is about as meaningful as declaring yourself tall.
