Yorzhik said:
Since all these ideas have been applied in the past, and since they are ideas that have worked every time they've been tried, I'd say your objection is either poorly thought out or that you are an elitist.
I don't believe a single thing in that is actually true.
It's all true. And the data I've provided shows it's true.
I'm not sure what you mean by elitist, so I hold out part of it could be true. Holding a doctorate, by way of example, puts me in an academic elite. If you mean that I believe society should be led by an elite, I'd say that's true. People of superior virtue and wisdom, by way of example, would make better leaders than people with less of either.
To be sure, people of superior virtue and wisdom should lead. But we see that becoming more and more rare in the ranks of Phd and Masters holders.
Consider that most academics think Keynesian economics is a good idea. It's not a deciding factor that someone is lacking wisdom and virtue, but it is a factor. And there are many others, which most Masters and PhD's fail.
The reason they fail is the thought of any ideas right of center in all our schools of higher learning is anathema in most departments. This is another reason to cause you to pause about the wisdom and virtue of the elites if they cannot abide the existence of other reasonable ideas.
John Mackey explains it to some extent."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rYPp4ofXAs"
Well that's not true unless you confuse consideration with agreement. I've tackled any number of arguments contrary to my own from a number of people I've spoken to during the course of this thread. I'll do more of that in this post.
Your idea of tackling an argument consists largely of waving it away. You should tackle the questions about why the county data runs counter to your narrative, but you simply wave your hand and say state and country data is better when the state and country data comes from higher resolution sources like county data. You should tackle why you mention poverty at all when you keep saying it doesn't enter the discussion. You should tackle why homicide rates are so low in areas where gun ownership rates are so high. You need to tackle what self defense is in reality, regardless what the law says. You need to tackle why most of the data says more guns equals less crime and why you cherry-pick the contrary. You need to tackle why you expect people to have no reaction to a government that takes their stuff because of someone else's evil actions when the benefit of the confiscation is not measurable.
Rather, my data is objectively observable and repeatable. It's true for nations and states.
As is my data. The rub is why good data seems contradictory. I've explained why, while you haven't.
I think you can focus narrowly enough, cherry pick enough to support all sorts of contentions. But the fact remains that as with nations, so states. It's not an amazing coincidence. And it occurs even in different cultures that share the same sort of law.
Cherry picking would be taking some counties and not others when considering my data. Or taking state data and ignoring more detailed data within states - oh, that's what you're doing.
You're the one cherry picking data.
Complete nonsense for any number of reasons offered prior including, to paraphrase, "We can't reasonably suggest that the foundation of law be scrapped for 3 guiding principles"
Then you haven't been listening to what I've been saying. That's very elitist of you.
And I've been reasonable with you. Answering your questions directly and being charitable with my assumptions about your statements.
or when I noted your plan for smashing black markets (legalizing the illegal) was problematic on two fronts: first, much of black market transactions aren't really about producing illegal goods, but selling illegally procured but otherwise legal goods and, second, that beyond that the principle invites legalizing most vice to eliminate the profit of vice by a relatively small number of people. One could and I would argue that the greater harm would be found in the impact of that legalization.
Sure. You don't legalize all black markets.
But one doesn't have to look too hard at what to ban/regulate/restrict if one uses principled law instead of situational law.
Those examples rebut both your premise above and your claim that I don't consider different opinions.
Only if you take the most uncharitable stance, put words in my mouth, ignore what I've said, and don't consider the facts.
And note, to the extent my ideas are implemented things get better. While your ideas, OTOH, don't accomplish anything until radical irreversible change has been implemented. Which means you can judge my ideas and reverse them with little trouble, while your ideas will cause ongoing pain and death if they don't work.
My workable solutions, tried and produced without destroying any of the Western democracies that employ them (by which I mean all of them) dramatically less gun related violence and death.
And your ideas increase other non-gun violence and death. The data is clear. You not seeing this as a problem for your solutions fit's neatly into an elitist mindset.
Yorzhik said:
We've been trying to fix these problems for a long time by doing the same thing that doesn't work over and over - chiefly money transfers
Town Heretic said:
You said that before. I rebutted the presumption. I won't repeat the rebuttal
Your rebuttal is trying to deny reality.
Here are the real numbers:
View attachment 26105
Your opinion of your ideas was never in question. My opinion of them is in print and in particular prior.
It's not my opinion. Numbers are clear:
View attachment 26106
I've spoken to the problems of concentrated populations, especially where there are concentrations of poor. I also noted New York state and city on the point in relation to law and effect.
You aren't talking about "gun violence and mass shootings" anymore. Now you're talking about homicide and violence in general.
Yorzhik said:
And another thing to note, the firepower of guns hasn't changed a great deal in the last ~75 years. It's not the guns that changed.
Town Heretic said:
That's a curious focus, given the founders wrote the right into our Constitution a smidge earlier and I've spoken to why and what has fundamentally changed since then.
What you ignore, quite uncharitably, is that homicide and violence were very low when guns were no less deadly than today. And
household gun ownership rates were very high (higher than they are now).
View attachment 26107
Arguing against child labor laws doesn't really require a rebuttal. I just wanted you on the record.
That's an emotional statement in
view of the facts:
| In judging the issue of child labor also, Mr. Krugman is a pragmatist, asking what else is available. It often isn't education. In India, for example, destitute parents sometimes sell their children to Persian Gulf begging syndicates whose bosses mutilate them for a higher take, he says. ''If that is the alternative, it is not so easy to say that children should not be working in factories,'' Mr. Krugman said. |
Ironic that the facts are so powerful that a leftist like Paul Krugman has to admit that parents, in general, don't actually want to hurt there children.
True of almost any alternative given public schools must take any student who is enrolled. The less selective your process the lower the mean. And if you have a hospital that refuses trauma victims you're going to have a much better survival rate, comparatively, to those who take them in.
Anyone who believes that education harms someone is in need of additional education.
Anyone who believes that government schools are teaching kids good character needs an education.
But you also have to believe that somehow we have an exceptionally high lower mean. Especially when the population of the lower mean was so much smaller not too long ago. And you'd also have to believe that being the lower mean makes a child evil.
I know I'm wasting my text on telling you that character is more important than academics, but it's the truth that might be better argued in another thread.
You literally wrote: "For broken families, you've already identified that the problem is almost entirely single mothers."
While the cause of a problem and naming a problem are 2 different things, I can understand that being an elitist means you need to take the most uncharitable approach.
No, you misstated the present reality, a long vanquished tender years presumption in favor of the mother and suggested that same legal mistake should be vested in the fathers, which underscores your blaming mothers, by the way.
I didn't misstate the present reality. Single motherhood happens in a divorce about 80% of the time despite any changes in the law for many decades, although in the last few years that rate seems to be going down. And the percentage of single mother lead households has held steady at about 30% overall since about the middle 80's.
What I said before is consistent with the facts. And the solution is to have kids raised by their fathers, not their mothers, is for good reason. The best indicator of a delinquent is coming from a mother lead household while coming from a father lead household is not far below coming from a household with a mother and father.
So, yes, the courts need to impose the reverse of what we have now. Not to make up for past injustice, but to do what is best for children. And if you need to know God's opinion on the matter, He said to pray for the fatherless, but not the motherless.
On health and nutrition programs for poor children.
It actually has worked. Every time. Providing proper nutrition and healthcare for poor children does precisely what it is aimed at doing. It isn't meant to do else.
Our rate of poor, and less healthy - especially from poor diet, has not changed much for decades despite vast increases in welfare spending.
Absent a compelling reason relating to the safety and well being of the child joint custody, which isn't rare at all, is a sensible solution.
That's not true. The standard visitation order in most states, even without joint custody, is better than that. And most visitation is worked out between parties without court mandate at all, but I'll come back to that. Primary physical custodianship is in the child's best interest, providing a stable base and the standard order relating to visitation can be arranged as suits the parties, with an eye to respecting that stability, especially during school months. It works well when both parents cooperate and focus on the kids instead of themselves.
Actually it varies, though mothers do tend to be the primary custodian more often than not. Overwhelmingly by choice and agreement of both parents. A Pew study in 2012 looked at it and found mothers spending twice as much time, prior to divorce, in direct roles with the children of divorce. That same study noted that a great many fathers don't use the time allotted them. And 27% have no contact with their children post divorce.
DivorcePeers looked at the problem and noted that only around 9% of custody arrangements are actually imposed by the court system.
Thanks for making my point. Most kids of divorce live, even primarily in a joint custody situation, with their moms. This is bad for children by any measure of delinquency. This isn't true for kids raised by a father only. If we loved our children in this country we would give custody to fathers by default.
Your foundational assumptions are simply wrong. Your remedy is as wrong as reverse discrimination.
Reverse discrimination is based on skin color. That's wrong.
Children being raised by fathers in the event of divorce is a good idea based on tradition, common sense, and science to do what is best for the child.
Sure they do. And most of that sort carry histories. By the time I was involved as a VAWA lawyer in the process the chances were good that I could find a laundry list of police involvement with the parties and frequently a litany of hospital visits. I always spoke with the police first, then a family doctor or admitting physician about the sorts of wounds inflicted and what they had witnessed or could reasonably, professionally infer. Most of the time it was clear enough.
Sure. Because most women are just evil liars who beat themselves then call the cops so they can send the other person they moved in with or married to jail. That makes sense as a rule...if you're nuts. Or, as a rule, people who claim to have been beaten by someone and who have the marks to demonstrate it aren't crazy, lying, or attempting to manipulate the system. I've caught people trying to do that, but they were the exception to a sad, tragic rule.
That was a lot of text not answering the question.
The problem isn't that women get bruised, or that not all women manipulate the system. The problem is that any woman can, if she pleases, get a man put in jail at least immediately if not after court proceedings, simply based on her word of what happened.
That's just not true, so I'll leave the reader to go back and read what I actually set out.
I actually didn't, only noted that the enormous amount of indirect capital poured into the political realm by the NRA was substantive before you got to any of the industry players and other groups with a vested interest and their own direct and indirect contributions.
I showed what the NRA was spending in specific years which was more than you stated as the average, and thus, it is entirely true that the NRA just doesn't have the money to put politicians into their pockets.
You gave us a yearly average of about 7 million dollars when the yearly average of lobbyists overall is near 2.5 billion.
Which apparently means to note facts contradicting your presumptions.
Meaning you make declarative statements despite the facts presented.
I noted two things. First, you don't appear to realize that most of the black market activity is about stolen goods and secondly that if you applied your logic on how to pull the teeth of criminal gain (by legalizing the activity) you'd end up with a worse problem.
View attachment 26108
First, I think your stolen goods market,
which is about 10 billion a year, is nothing compared to even
the drug market, which is just one part (the biggest part) of the black market for illegal goods
| The Organization of American States estimated that the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. was $34 billion in 2013. The Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that $100 billion worth of illegal drugs were sold in the U.S. in 2013.[2]The Organization of American States estimated that the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. was $34 billion in 2013. The Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that $100 billion worth of illegal drugs were sold in the U.S. in 2013.[2] |
And other parts are not small either. Black markets for plumbing, electrical, and construction services are huge, and that doesn't even include the rest of the illegal labor markets (it was noted that many of the illegal day labor markets doing cleanup work in Houston was a multimillion dollar black market).
And the cost of even silly black markets is in lives, too. Eric Garner died because he was part of a black market.
So, no, by any measure stolen goods is not "most" of the black market.
Yorzhik said:
Did you know that owning another person as a chattel slave would be wrong even it if were legal?
Town Heretic said:
Sure. Doesn't impact the point even a little though.
It impacts the point entirely. It means that the law doesn't make things right or wrong. So if the act of owning a gun that shoots more than one round, or selling single cigarettes in NY, is made illegal, it is still right. The law should be wiser and, in general, not say things that are right are illegal.
Where did I write that again? By which I mean you should quote that one.
"registration is only a barrier if you're illiterate"
Eliminating public education would raise the literacy rate? Do tell.
Because parents, in general, don't hate their children. Unschooled kids almost always learn to read for other things they want even before they get interested in academics-as-a-chore.
Yorzhik said:
To be sure, anytime one mentions what happened in Germany a lot of eyes roll. But that doesn't mean the lessons should be ignored.
Town Heretic said:
The lessons need to be applicable to the consideration. This one wasn't a decent parallel, as I noted long ago and in particular when it was first used by another poster before you tried to reform it.
It's not only a lesson, it's an example of the very thing we are discussing. The tool used to keep Jews from getting guns was registration.
Yorzhik said:
The mass killers will either procure guns, bombs, or use other methods. The stats won't change much.
Town Heretic said:
I'm guessing that you're playing again, because you understand mass shooters are a statistically small portion of homicides and that eliminating them entirely wouldn't greatly alter the statistical trend overall, even though it would have a great impact on the hundreds of victims, wounded and killed otherwise, and in terms of the ripples those deaths and maimings cause.
No, I'm saying that where the discussion is gun violence and mass shootings, talking about deaths by other means is off topic.
You already invited discussions beyond gun violence and mass shootings by mentioning that concentrated poor people factor into the statistics.
Admit you want to keep the discussion about gun violence and mass shootings and explain the vast difference between big cities where guns are banned/restricted vs. rural areas where gun ownership rates are high and homicide (by any means) is close to other developed countries in those terms only.
Of course you are. When you can't reject it, attempt to taint it, by inference where possible. I've looked at a number of sources, but I prefer using the Mass Shooter Tracker
It just means that my solutions will work to reduce the deaths you claim I don't care about.
I haven't said anything about counties beyond noting that the larger data pool is superior and that states with stronger gun laws (states which have rather large cities in them, like New York) have appreciably fewer deaths from gun violence than states with looser laws, something that we also observe in nations. I use states and nations because the greater populations are more reliable for statistical analysis.
More specific data that is consistent in aggregate with larger-picture data is always better. And wonderfully for us, the county data "added together" is consistent with the state and country data. But then the data doesn't promote taking away everyone's guns, so you don't like it.
What do you mean by security personnel? The police, certainly. A mall cop? No.
Any security that needs a gun to do his job. Do mall cops need a gun to do their job?
lain: Hokay. If you're feeling better about yourself let's get on with it.
