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Boboss - Kirk, I just want it noted that my criticism of your position hasn't altered in the slightest. I am of the opinion that you have failed to engage properly with what I have written. I will however respect Id's request to keep this debate out of this thread.
I'VE failed to engage in what YOU'VE written? The only thing you wrote is this:
I do wish you'd stop going on about how making guns illegal only makes sure that criminals have guns, Kirk. That may be true as a matter of definition, but the broader point which I suspect is embedded in your argument - that making guns illegal won't really do anything to prevent and lessen gun crime - is at worst complete bollocks and at best highly debatable.
On the incident itself. Horrible horrible business. I wonder if the guy was angry or whether he wasn't just dead inside. Numb. Trying to feel something.
I can't make sense of it at all and it makes me feel sick.
That's 100% of what you'd posted in this thread so far, unless I'm missing something. Are you posting under multiple names? All you said was that you wished I wouldn't talk about making guns illegal encouraging black market gun sales, and that it was bollocks. You couldn't possibly have said less. I responded to what you wrote in the same post that I responded to Fraser in. How have I not engaged in your incredibly nuanced, intricate post? I've been bending over backwards to respond to every argument directed towards me, and I've been trying to explain my position very carefully, even though pretty much half the responses to my posts have been sarcasm and personal attacks. You wrote a single paragraph based around the word "bollocks," and some how I'm the one who's not engaging?
The position that gun control doesn't work because of black market gun sales is a perfectly legitimate position to take. Illegal guns are very easy to get in most big cities. In an earlier post I even named a street in San Francisco where people walk up and down the street all day selling them. You may not believe that guns would be available through a black market, that's perfectly fine, but you can't just declare it to be "bollocks," declare that it shouldn't be discussed, and then claim I'm ignoring you when I've responded directly to you. Please explain to me how I haven't engaged in what you said.
Tann - Gun ownership was highest among middle-aged,
college- educated people of rural small-town
America.
That's a good point, but the presence of gun lovers in small towns doesn't really preclude the existence of people who live in dangerous places and might need a weapon to protect themselves.
Incidentally, Kleck's findings have been criticised by a number of other reports, so it isn't quite as simple as:
Elijah mentioned some stats. There you go.
Sorry, I didn't mean for that to come off as "Elijah mentioned some stats, there you go they're absolute proof of my case." You can't win arguments like that based on one case and I figured the numbers would be shaky anyways. I meant it more as "There you go, here are some examples of that side of the argument." But then again, this guy's studies being criticized doesn't really mean that there are no people anywhere with a need to defend themselves.
Tann also mentioned a school shooting which had been stopped by a group in which two people had guns, and I talked a tiny bit about how a lot of people needed weapons to protect themselves after things went bad in Hurricane Katrina, when the US government essentially abandoned a chunk of the country to anarchy and chaos.
If we are talking about the Bronx, say, rather than Sierra Leone, that's quite an interesting statement.
Very very good point. Most debate about gun rights in the US usually completely leave out the international gun trade which, in its legal form and illegal form, is contributing to huge amounts of conflict all over the world. The guns-for-self-defense argument becomes a lot trickier on this level. If you're looking at it from the global perspective of wanting to keep the peace and stop the wars and genocides going on, ending the gun trade (as well as ending the war on drugs and fixing/dismantling the WTO and world bank, fighting globalization, cutting down on oil, etc) would be the way go. Though if I was an individual person living alone in some place as crazy as Sierra Leone, I'd probably think anybody trying to disarm me was a maniac. Worldwide weapons trading happens on a lot of levels too. Governments sell them too each other, mafias sneak them across borders, intelligence agencies give them to rebel groups. It becomes a much much more complex issue, but as a quick response I guess I'd say I think international weapons trading on all levels should be slowed down, if not stopped, as quickly as possible (along with all the other things I listed above), and whether or not its a good idea for people to own guns would vary from situation to situation and region to region.
It might be weird speculation, but couldn't the problem of people snapping and going on these rampages be more attributed to a collective mentality of fear and distrust rather than the gun-culture itself?
I think so. The America/Canada comparison keeps coming up, and I think that's a pretty good example. I feel like Americans culture really winds people up and then doesn't give them anywhere to go. Now that his multimedia package has shown up his specific psychology will become a matter of study, which is very important, but these events usually bring up a lot more denial about the state of our culture than it does a desire to examine ourselves (outside of message boards like this of course). But that's not really a surprise.
One thing this shooting highlights is the poor state of our mental health system. According to the news reports I saw today the shooter had actually been institutionalized for a three days, but it's exceedingly difficult for them to keep somebody longer than that, whether the patient wants to stay or not. A lot of mentally ill people are just thrown in the streets in this country because there aren't any more state run facilities to keep them in. It sounds like everybody around him knew he was unbalanced. I can't help but think that with a better mental health system this guy might not have fallen through the cracks. |
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