58 Dead, 500 Plus Wounded

[Town Heretic]

Well that's just false Town. I do support them, utterly.

I said you didn't support the rational necessity. You declared it. You didn't prove that either of your alternatives or the more insulting proffer after were the product of reason, let alone necessity. That you favor them, to use support as loosely as you attempted declaration, isn't surprising or compelling, only indicative.

No, that's what you're doing right now, and have been, ever since you pretended to not know which question I was asking you, after you summoned me to your little "digest" blog thread over there in the woods.

Every bit of that is nonsense, so there's no real answering it beyond the note. You're misrepresenting or misremembering my response and mischaracterizing the mechanics of this place regarding a thread you similary mischaracterize. So...

I haven't seen any evidence of that aside from this declaration of yours.

I'm comfortable with the reader making their own decision on it and your judgment in the matter isn't material to me given your last and the illustration of its nature in what follows.

Nihilo just believes that humans all already possess the right to keep and to bear arms

Not a point argued against, by anyone in any person, first, second, or third.

Every single nation's military has concluded just exactly what Town himself knows to be true, and yet he won't cop to it---that when we are imperiled, when our life is in danger, having a standard issue selective fire rifle or carbine is just a much nicer thing to have in that moment than not to. That's exactly what the Second Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms" means, according to the Supreme Court.

Why you pretend I haven't dealt particularly with this is anyone's guess. And, again, I support the bearing of arms superior to those in production during the time when the Founders framed the right, with an eye toward raising an army and understanding the necessity of arms as everything from production of goods to frontier protection.

Town's view is the minority view.

Which view? Most people favor some of what I think is necessary. Many oppose other parts of my proffer.

There are 50 countries in the Union of nations we call the United States.

No. There are fifty states in what is The United States of America. Your parlance would constitute a significant departure from the norm.

The US outnumbers the "western democracies" he keeps referencing, and our Supreme Court has said what I have said, and against what he's saying.

Ah, so that's why you keep trying that, so you can claim a numerical superiority. Good grief. But then, again, those states within our singular nation that have stronger gun laws demonstrate an appreciably advanced degree of safety from gun violence, if not to the same extent that stronger measures of law in every other Western democracy produces.

On the first point, that's a lie

It's not. But it will frame your continued on the point. Here you go:

I wrote, in post 155 (linked) that I favored:
Registration

Disagreed.

There are a lot of reasons why it makes sense and not a one against it that I've heard. It can make it easier to keep track of lost and stolen guns, among other things.

A safety course in handling firearms.

Disagreed.

Great. Why? What's the rational objection to a safety course? To making people safer in the operation of the gun?

The closest you came to a semblance of support was that you liked the notion and would consider it as a school program. So no lie at all. And I don't need to characterize you not remembering your own position as a lie or you as a liar to make the point. You owe me an apology, but I don't expect it given what follows and your apparent investment.

and on the second point, we already do that, against the Second Amendment's proscription of such infringements. I'm unwilling to further restrict what's already illegally restricted.

You're not actually addressing my second point with that.

I think you're just a liar Town.

And you're just as wrong as you were a moment ago.

The more I type out this response, the less charity I can afford when interpreting your position. You're a liar.

Charity? I'd settle for reasonable restraint, but that's life for you. All you really manage is to underscore which of us is overly steered by emotion here, Nihilo. I don't need to kill the messenger. Your message is problematic enough for you. You have to reshape our nation into 50, attempt to call a lie to a statement of fact, supra, and that's a sad waste of both our time and energy.

Really? Isn't that because you're comparing apples (all 50 of the United States) with oranges (the "Western democracies" you reference are each One state, not a collection of 50), again (it's a theme with you, drawing phony parallels and false analogies)? I think it is.

No. I'm comparing nations with our foundational approach to law and general guiding cultural markers in how we approach the problem of gun violence, how the differences impact the result and how uniform and predictable those results are, how they are reflected to a lessened extent in our own states that attempt to model more closely with their choices.

 

[Town Heretic]

:rotfl: What are you even talking about Town? Why did you quote yourself talking to Yorzhik as if that's what I was commenting on?

That isn't what I did. What I did was literally tell you that I don't have a problem noting when I get something wrong. That in your repeated if late attempt to assert an inability to back off a point because of some egot connection...I used the comment to Yor, whom I'm also disagreeing with on the larger point, to illustrate that isn't the case. Then I continued with our conversation.

It's not convoluted. I made a contrary statement then provided evidence for the assertion. Simple as that.

Are you that dishonest that you'd steer poor Arthur and Rusha into thinking that I was responding to that comment, rather than the one I actually did comment on?

No one could read your next comment as a response to my illustration. The reason your name reappears is to keep anyone from being confused on by a quote box without title appearing underneath a quote of mine.

You're either devilish, or you might want to look into the onset of dementia or something along those lines I'm afraid.

No, you were out of balance at that point that you don't see what I suspect you'd recognize easily enough without that blood in your eye, Nihilo, the thing that had you calling liar repeatedly instead of really seeing what you were looking at.

Actually Town, you're the one who's urinating on my back and insisting that it's just a warm rain.Very capable gas lighting on your part. Expert display of it here.

I suppose I can't expect you to properly characterize what you aren't understanding, so I hope at some point you'll calm down, read it again and realize that's among a number of mistakes your temper led you into.

 

[patrick jane]

[h=3]YouTube is filtering out stories on the Las Vegas shooting – Here's ..[/h]
YouTube has changed its search algorithm to ensure that only sources it deems “authoritative” show up at the top of search results, but has not revealed how it determines which sources are considered authoritative and which aren’t.
[h=3]Why the change?[/h]In the days following the Las Vegas shooting, many videos appeared presenting “conspiracy theories” or misinformation. Some examples of suppressed videos are those that promote the idea that the shooting was staged by the government to promote gun control, that there was a second shooter, or that claim the shooter represented anti-fascist or anti-Trump or far-right groups or interests.

​

Now, when you search “Las Vegas shooting” on YouTube, only mainstream media sources show up on the first pages. The so-called “conspiracy” videos are still on YouTube, but they can be much more difficult to find.


No more free speech folks. No more questions, just believe what we tell you or else.

 

[Town Heretic]

Or, it's appropriate to filter out misinformation and half-cocked nonsense when people are looking for actual information and authority.

 

[Nihilo]

It's 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his friends want to possess M14s* and carry them openly.

What say you?

I say, I said, Yes.


* - At this time, the M14, a selective fire rifle, was standard issue weaponry for the Army, along with the new M16.

 

[Nihilo]

It's 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his friends want to possess M14s* and carry them openly.

What say you?

I say, I said, Yes.


* - At this time, the M14, a selective fire rifle, was standard issue weaponry for the Army, along with the new M16.

@Arthur Brain and @Rusha, what do yo two think? Would you agree with me, or with Ronald Reagan.

From the article, if posed this request in 1968, we can safely conclude that future President Ronald Reagan would have said something along the lines . . .

that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that guns were a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." In a later press conference, Reagan added that the Mulford Act "would work no hardship on the honest citizen."

IOW Reagan would have washed his hands of the honest citizen Dr. King's assassination/murder.

You? "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his friends want to possess M14s* and carry them openly. What say you?" I would have said Yes, of course. Of course. I don't need a reason, so long as you're not a violent felon. Because it's an inherent civil right, and I don't need you to be able to deftly prove it through sophisticated argumentation. And I'm not a racist either.


* - Standard issue handgun in the Army at the time was the 5-inch 1911. In the Soviet Union, their standard issue service rifle was the AK47 selective fire rifle. The 1911 was introduced as standard issue sidearm in 1911, and Kalashnikov's design was finalized in 1947. The American service rifle / standard issue in WWII was the M1 Garand, a semiautomatic rifle loaded with an eight-round clip. The Civilian Marksmanship Program sells surplus M1s, and have been for decades.

 

[Yorzhik]

lain: Hokay. If you're feeling better about yourself let's get on with it.

Then let me step over it and cement it to an actual argument or two. No, a skilled debater who couldn't meet the substance would have tried to use rhetorical devices to offset. But ultimately it won't serve.

Since I've met substance with substance, this wouldn't apply to me. Or do you think I haven't made any good points of substance?

Why? Because even you don't believe you. Your camp talks about unfettered right, but none of you believe in it. You create your own artificial impediment to self arming, making a line for reasons that make sense to you or to prop up your present position. So Nihilo talks about the Court's holding on citizen soldiers and you talk about a weapon being discriminatory in its aiming (though in the hands of the untrained, a thing I think you'd balk at mandating, an AK might as well be a bazooka for all the discriminatory aiming that will go on as its used) but all both of you really accomplish with that is to support my contention that there is no unfettered and absolute right and that as with any we restrict it using reason and considering BOTH our collective and individual interests.

Here you make a good point. Why should the line be set at any weapon that can be trained on only a single individual regardless of type? Because as long as we are not violating the rights of innocent people, the government has no say in the matter.

It won't serve you because anywhere we have universal and tough gun laws we have dramatically decreased levels of gun related violence and mass shooting.

As you note, there is no way to measure if the decrease will be dramatic or not because we won't be able to tell if someone switched their method to murder - "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".

Thus, what you just said is wrong.

And it won't serve you because you're forced to do this sort of thing and most people aren't stupid. So when you have to try to make it about theft of property

Who owns the guns you are taking?

and some other evil people,

Somehow murders aren't evil?

out of the hands of the sometimes mentally unstable, sometimes emotionally overcome, and sometimes simply willfully evil people who empirl the rest of us.

So you know they actually are evil, but a moment ago you said we aren't doing this because of evil people.

And, BTW, why don't you count emotionally overcome and mentally ill people that shoot others as evil?

Actually, we know that countries with those universal gun laws have dramatically fewer incidences of gun related violence, and we see that even in states within our own nation.

So your claim is that if we only allow single shot guns that our homicide rates will go down to the levels of other countries. First, I'd like to know which country you are talking about- the one with the very lowest rate? or one with about a middl'n rate?

Oh, that's right - as you are about to say, there is no way we can measure the effectiveness of your ideas:

mass shootings, horrific as they are, aren't anything like the rule, so they won't dramatically impact the overall arc of violence in this or any nation.

So we have no way of measuring the effectiveness of taking everyone's guns. And it's an irreversible action.

That, dear readers, is a bad idea.

Similarly, if I could cure Parkinson disease it wouldn't appreciably impact deaths from disease, but that's no argument against the cure absent a rational argument to leave off.

Your analogy doesn't follow. Parkinson's disease doesn't consider becoming cancer to find other ways to kill a person if a cure gets in its way. Emotionally overcome, mentally unstable, and other kinds of evil people who consider murder a good idea do.

And beyond that, even when you are shown reversible solutions that scale very well, you doggedly pursue non-reversible solutions with religious fervor.

Nothing in that is true. It's just a big, rhetorical flourish without parts.

It's all true. My solutions, from small implementations to every point in the entire country, are not only reversible, but measurable.

Your solution, once the government has gone in and taken everyone's gun by force, will have a tough time being reversed. And until you've done the drastic deed entirely, you won't be able to claim you've done anything at all.

They aren't and never have been my ideas.

Whatever. Call my ideas the same as yours in type if you like.

From the start I noted that we have had decades of evidence in testing out what every other Western democracy has (while differing to one extent or another) done to impact gun violence and all of them have been dramatically more successful than our own "more guns equals safer" nonsense.

Decades? wow...

My ideas on the law have millennia of proven good results. And we have decades of proven research that shows more guns equals less crime.

A reasonable person wouldn't characterize laws that would save lives as jumping off a cliff. And that's another problem you have.

It's an analogy. It means once you do a thing you can't just turn around and go back. If you had any ability to read charitably you would have realized that.

 

[Town Heretic]

Why should the line be set at any weapon that can be trained on only a single individual regardless of type? Because as long as we are not violating the rights of innocent people, the government has no say in the matter.

And I answered you on the notion. Primarily the problem is you're creating your own reason why it's reasonable to draw the line, but however you go about justifying the line it's a restriction and the only real difference between you and anyone is the argument for it.

As you note, there is no way to measure if the decrease will be dramatic or not because we won't be able to tell if someone switched their method to murder - "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". Thus, what you just said is wrong.

Well, no. Nothing in what I said in response to your stating that the measures I support wouldn't impact murders is wrong. To believe as you purported to would be to believe that the fellow in Las Vegas would have found a way to kill as many by another means. It's possible, but is it probable? Is it probable for most of the people involved?

Who owns the guns you are taking?

I've spoken to the pointlessness of attempting to frame banning a thing as a form of theft.

Somehow murders aren't evil?

That is literally contradicted by quote you chose to respond to...In the fuller quote I noted a number of different wellsprings for the act, evil among them.

So you know they actually are evil, but a moment ago you said we aren't doing this because of evil people.

No, I didn't, though my argument isn't predicated on the reason why men commit the act.

And, BTW, why don't you count emotionally overcome and mentally ill people that shoot others as evil?

Because an evil act is one of intent and understanding that some who are mentally ill lack. If you lack capacity you're a lot like a hurricane.

So your claim is that if we only allow single shot guns that our homicide rates will go down to the levels of other countries. First, I'd like to know which country you are talking about- the one with the very lowest rate? or one with about a middl'n rate?

I've already posted and noted countries and states that do better and have dramatically better results for their efforts.

Oh, that's right - as you are about to say, there is no way we can measure the effectiveness of your ideas:

No, you're not following or you're mischaracterizing my response to your attempt to negate the effort within a larger stream of violence that would subsume it. In point of fact we can and I've repeatedly noted you can mark the difference between nations and states with tough, universal gun laws and those without them, that gun violence and mass shootings are markedly reduced.

So we have no way of measuring the effectiveness of taking everyone's guns. And it's an irreversible action.

No and no, supra.

Your analogy doesn't follow. Parkinson's disease doesn't consider becoming cancer to find other ways to kill a person if a cure gets in its way.

You have no way of knowing or demonstrating that mass shooters go on to become bombers or find another means.

It's all true. My solutions, from small implementations to every point in the entire country, are not only reversible, but measurable.

Answered prior and more than once.

Your solution, once the government has gone in and taken everyone's gun by force

Stepping around the whole evil thieving government rehash, the fact remains that the right isn't jeopardized by the laws I support, that the citizen living under them would be better armed than those citizen soldiers of the Founder's day and they seemed to believe that was sufficient to protect themselves.

will have a tough time being reversed.

As it should be.

Whatever. Call my ideas the same as yours in type if you like.

I can't speak to the source for you "change the law to this" approach. I'm simply noting that the ideas I've advocated originated elsewhere and have been tested elsewhere over decades...and echoed here to good effect.

Decades? wow...

Yeah. It's a pretty long running series of testing grounds. Generational even.

My ideas on the law have millennia of proven good results.

See, I didn't just say that. I showed you how and where. You should try that.

And we have decades of proven research that shows more guns equals less crime.

To the contrary or we'd be the safest country on the planet instead of being markedly the opposite on the point among all the Western democracies.

It's an analogy. It means once you do a thing you can't just turn around and go back.

And there are any number of ways to express that, but you chose poorly by drawing one where the impact was violence where the actual impact is its opposite.

If you had any ability to read charitably you would have realized that.

I think you're charitable enough with yourself for both of us and I absolutely realized the point.

 

[Arthur Brain]

@Arthur Brain and @Rusha, what do yo two think? Would you agree with me, or with Ronald Reagan.

From the article, if posed this request in 1968, we can safely conclude that future President Ronald Reagan would have said something along the lines . . .
IOW Reagan would have washed his hands of the honest citizen Dr. King's assassination/murder.

You? "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his friends want to possess M14s* and carry them openly. What say you?" I would have said Yes, of course. Of course. I don't need a reason, so long as you're not a violent felon. Because it's an inherent civil right, and I don't need you to be able to deftly prove it through sophisticated argumentation. And I'm not a racist either.


* - Standard issue handgun in the Army at the time was the 5-inch 1911. In the Soviet Union, their standard issue service rifle was the AK47 selective fire rifle. The 1911 was introduced as standard issue sidearm in 1911, and Kalashnikov's design was finalized in 1947. The American service rifle / standard issue in WWII was the M1 Garand, a semiautomatic rifle loaded with an eight-round clip. The Civilian Marksmanship Program sells surplus M1s, and have been for decades.

Dude, there's a pretty straightforward reason why America has far and away the worst stats where it comes to gun related crime so maybe you can do the math as to where I stand on the issue.

 

[Nihilo]

Dude, there's a pretty straightforward reason why America has far and away the worst stats where it comes to gun related crime so maybe you can do the math as to where I stand on the issue.

1. When I look at the stats carefully I see that there are on average many more murderers per capita throughout the 50 nations of the American Union, than in many other Western democracies, although there are many more nations with even more murderers per capita than the US (but it is granted that it'd be poor to compare America to the many more violent nations as if it's positive, we should be comparing America with developed and stable nations like many in Europe, Japan and South Korea, Australia). When looking more closely, the murderers in America are not evenly dispersed throughout the Union's land, but concentrate in certain areas. We know where these areas are because our federal police force the FBI keeps track of where the murders occur. We know that in these certain areas, the murder per capita rate is far higher then the overall average per capita data for the 50 states in the Union. Most of America is as safe as the safest developed nations not currently in the Union, like the safest European nations and Japan and North Korea and Canada and Australia and New Zealand. It's where the murderers fester and flock where the problem is in America. The safer areas in America are universally the ones with the most lax gun laws, those that are more faithful to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment, which has now been incorporated against the 50 states, so the proscription of infringement of the RKBA (the "right to keep and bears arms," verbatim quoted from the Second Amendment), otherwise known as more pro-gun-rights, is more faithfully respected and recognized and affirmed there, than in many of the areas to which most of America's murderers flock. So we already know objectively that gun laws like the ones I support are safe and stable laws for a nation.

2. So in 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked permission for he and his friends to possess and carry loaded M14s and M16s publicly, you would have denied him, as the then future President of the United States Ronald Reagan would have? Repeating myself, my answer would be Of course you can (presuming you haven't been adjudicated as mentally deficient, or been convicted of at least a felony, or have a valid/qualifying TRO against you), Dr. King; you have a nice day now, and good luck. Because I'm not racist.

3. Thanks for your response and you're welcome to weigh in here. :e4e:

 

[Yorzhik]

I believe you believer that.

I believe that because it's true

What authority has most academic being of a Keynesian bent? Citation?

So you'll agree that if we find out that most people with a post graduate degree believe in government intervention in the economy on the scale we see today, or more, that we could consider them to have a lack of virtue and wisdom?

Completely untrue.

Completely true.

No, that's not what I wrote.

It's exactly what you wrote.

That's not my position.

It is what you wrote.

They aren't, universally.

They are, universally.

That's why the U.S. is the least safe place to live within the context of Western democracies and gun laws.

It's only the least safest place if you go to certain areas, which consequently, have low gun ownership rates. If you go to places with high gun ownership rates one will tend to be in a safe place.

Now you can tell me that your kitchen has a lot of guns and it's really safe. But your kitchen isn't as sound a source as a larger sampling. When you understand how samplings work in validating data you'll get my point.

Your example is poor. You would do better to use an analogy. If one were to use all kitchens, and all rooms, and all properties in the data... then you'd simply have higher resolution data than we have with the county data.

You think people are confused about what defending themselves means? I don't.

I think you would use a legal definition in order to confuse people. It is why you wouldn't say what the definition of self defense is.

Beyond that, I think only you, and people with your elitist mindset, are confused about what defending themselves means. Most people understand what it is and it is consistent with my definition.

It doesn't, supra and prior.

It does, supra and prior.

Irony noted.

Yes, do keep tabs on your irony.

Answered in the point and on the rhetorical distortion you use to frame it.

So who owns the guns? The government or the people that bought them?

Are they being taken because no one is being murdered? and if it's because people are being murdered, do you consider murders to be evil?

Rebutted prior. When you wave goofy notions of upending the foundation of law you know or should know you're not really proposing anything meaningful. It can't and won't happen. So you might as well simply support the status quo.

You never rebutted. You only ignored.

But now that you bring it up, what is the foundation of law? Isn't it life liberty and property?

No they don't. The opposite is observably true, both in our country and compared to every other Western democracy.

Yes they do. In the majority of studies they do. And the minority of studies where they don't those studies are infamous for releasing their data slowly and hiding behind convoluted definitions.

Interesting charts. You should try tying them into something I wrote. Something you can quote and then say, "See, this rebuts that contention."

They were tied to the quote under which they appear. Your uncharitable approach causes you to miss the connection.

No, I'm still talking about gun violence and mass shootings.

No, you are talking about the correlation between areas where there are concentrated poor and violence.

We have never had a time when the types of guns we have today were affordably saturating the marketplace. The gun market has done a marvelous job of promoting and lowering the cost of ownership on increasingly deadly guns.

Affordable or not, more households had the same powerful guns we have today when the homicide rate was much lower.

I'm not trying to interfere with ownership rates. I never have.

Except by taking everyone's gun and making them re-buy lesser guns in their place... after they are approved to do so by the government. Do you really think that doesn't have the intention of lowering with ownership rates?

There was literally nothing emotional about noting that anyone who is against child labor laws doesn't require a rebuttal on the point. It's on par with noting that I don't believe anyone arguing for segregation really needs to be rebutted, only noted.

I can see you aren't emotional - you're as cold as ice in light of your willingness to send kids to be prostitutes and to be mutilated because of apathy. Or do you think Krugman hasn't documented the results of banning child labor?

Who said you should send your kid to school to build their character? That's your job.

Any education that isn't based on teaching character first is teaching anti-social behavior. It's no wonder we get the horrible results we do from government schools.

Or let me ask you this. Do the schools expect the children to cheat or not cheat in their homework? Do the schools expect the children to listen in school? Do the schools expect the children to get their work done on time? Do the schools expect the children to respect school property? Do the schools expect the children to be nice to one another while in school?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are expecting the schools to teach character.

Well, no. No, I don't. And if you're going to assert the point you have to demonstrate why that's true. You haven't.

"For a local look, figures by the National Institute for Literacy indicate that 21 percent of the adults in Genesee County read at a first-grade level, and in Flint, the number is 36 percent (one of the highest illiteracy rates in Michigan with the statewide average at 18 percent)."

Do you think if we get the rest of the report by NIL that it will show dramatically different results for the rest of the country?

The reason government schools do such a horrible job is intrinsic to the system. And you want this same system to run a government gun licensing/registration/education program.

Funny coming from someone who dismisses mass murder as statistically insignificant. But never let it be said a little irony or a want of introspection got in your way.

No, you said it: "mass shootings, horrific as they are, aren't anything like the rule, so they won't dramatically impact the overall arc of violence in this or any nation"

The statistic varies by year. That's the high end as I've witnessed the data.

And the low end is 75%. That's just as bad. And it proves a bias in the courts.

I've also noted prior that in most cases the physical custody of the children is overwhelmingly decided upon between the parents, and not by the courts.

You really think 75% to 80% of fathers don't want their children? The will of the courts is well known, and divorce lawyers will give a father the chances of winning to their best ability knowing the court is biased toward mothers - so fathers, being men and having a tendency to do good math, don't waste money trying to do something that has a very low chance of succeeding. Or perhaps you don't know how much a custody battle costs on average these days... or for the last number of decades.

Citation to authority in support? And you realize that if the overwhelming majority of kids are in single mother homes then comparing the results can be a bit misleading.

You ignored the evidence. It showed that single motherhood vs single fatherhood was accounted for.

Maybe God knew that most of the time a child wouldn't be without their mother. Maybe the problem is in your reading and your bias.

oh, right, God had no idea that the result of single motherhood would be the greatest indicator of delinquency.

How many decades and compared to which? Citation to authority?

The evidence you ignored showed the poverty rate evened out in the 70's, while government spending on programs that rely on income levels has skyrocketed.

I think it's funny that you believe that.

You didn't answer the question. You noted that the custody battles are only in about 10% of divorces. You noted that mothers tend to be home more before the divorce.

But most notably, you implied that mothers are best for children in cases of divorce with no support, and ignored the evidence that fathers are best for kids in case of divorce.

So that you think it's funny that I believe that is nothing but your elitist attitude showing through again.

If I said "most" I stand corrected. I wasn't considering the drug trade.

So now that you realize you were wrong, the evidence leads you to understand...

I don't believe it is right for anyone to own weapons that made the Las Vegas mass murders possible. I favor weapons that more closely resemble what the founders thought reasonable, even if most of the reasons for possession of them have fallen by the wayside and no longer find a larger, societal good served by them.

But you don't. You believe anyone that needs a gun for their job should have one that is at least semi-automatic. And you believe criminals won't love putting their semi-autos up against breach loaders?

Actually they had a lot of guns, as I've noted before. The attempt was late in the day relative to the Nazi's move to create ghettos and camps. And I've spoken to the problematic nature of guns as instruments of revolution. And we're not talking about uneven penalization of a group within our society. At least I'm not.

I think you miss the point of the Nazi gun control program. It's not that the Jews would have been able to resist the regime, but that they were targeted because of registration. That is a part of history, and not a "what if" scenario.

Rather, I note that where you have concentrations of poor and poorly educated you have more crime and violence. It's part of the same conversation, in foundation.

Correct. So insisting on only referring to "gun violence" and "mass murder", as opposed to solving the problem of violence and murder is wrong on your part.

Yor believes that suggesting we wipe existing law off the books and retool our entire approach to justice is the way to go.

I don't believe that. But certainly your elitist mindset would lead you to believing that I do.

Given that's about as feasible as personal monorails to ease traffic congestion, he's essentially a status quo supporter.

A status quo supporter would want to keep things as they are. I want things to change for the better.

He opposes mandatory gun safety courses, gun registration, and any attempt to limit the type of weapons commonly used in mass shootings

This is correct. For good reason.

And I answered you on the notion. Primarily the problem is you're creating your own reason why it's reasonable to draw the line, but however you go about justifying the line it's a restriction and the only real difference between you and anyone is the argument for it.

The justification is correct. Therefore, the line is correct.

Well, no. Nothing in what I said in response to your stating that the measures I support wouldn't impact murders is wrong. To believe as you purported to would be to believe that the fellow in Las Vegas would have found a way to kill as many by another means. It's possible, but is it probable? Is it probable for most of the people involved?

What you've said is that the same trend line on homicide and violence would continue. It's exactly the same kind of argument that discusses what a right to privacy will allow and exempt the discussion of when a human begins in light of that right.

I've spoken to the pointlessness of attempting to frame banning a thing as a form of theft.

Then don't use the word theft. If you prefer "taken by force" then we can continue.

That is literally contradicted by quote you chose to respond to...In the fuller quote I noted a number of different wellsprings for the act, evil among them.

No, I didn't, though my argument isn't predicated on the reason why men commit the act.

So if the murder rate in the US was the lowest rate of western nations, you wouldn't propose taking non-government people's non-breach loading guns by force?

Because an evil act is one of intent and understanding that some who are mentally ill lack. If you lack capacity you're a lot like a hurricane.

But somehow, where guns have a high ownership rate, hurricanes don't happen.

I've already posted and noted countries and states that do better and have dramatically better results for their efforts.

They had the same results before they banned/restricted guns. It's not the guns

No, you're not following or you're mischaracterizing my response to your attempt to negate the effort within a larger stream of violence that would subsume it. In point of fact we can and I've repeatedly noted you can mark the difference between nations and states with tough, universal gun laws and those without them, that gun violence and mass shootings are markedly reduced.

And if we don't discuss when a human begins, then we can discuss whether it is OK to terminate a pregnancy.

You cannot divorce the gun murder rate from the murder rate knowing the murder rate won't change.

No and no, supra.

Yes, supra.

Let's say you force everyone (not in the government) to give up their non-breach loading guns and the murder rates don't go down. Do you think the same people in power will just say "Oops, sorry, that didn't fix anything so here are all your guns back." No, the move is not reversible.

You have no way of knowing or demonstrating that mass shooters go on to become bombers or find another means.

Yes I do. The murder rates stay the same.

[quote

It's all true. My solutions, from small implementations to every point in the entire country, are not only reversible, but measurable.

Answered prior and more than once.

[/quote]
Never answered. You never showed how what I propose couldn't be implemented slowly and be reversed if necessary. And I showed you the measurement you could judge me by.

Stepping around the whole evil thieving government rehash, the fact remains that the right isn't jeopardized by the laws I support, that the citizen living under them would be better armed than those citizen soldiers of the Founder's day and they seemed to believe that was sufficient to protect themselves.

And the measure would not be reversible.

As it should be.

No, if a measure doesn't show a positive change, then it should be reversed. And your measure will have a bad effect for reasons listed before.

I can't speak to the source for you "change the law to this" approach. I'm simply noting that the ideas I've advocated originated elsewhere and have been tested elsewhere over decades...and echoed here to good effect.

The ideas I advocate originated with God Himself and have been tested with positive results for millennia.

Yeah. It's a pretty long running series of testing grounds. Generational even.

And my testing grounds run to ancient history. They're better.

See, I didn't just say that. I showed you how and where. You should try that.

I did show you how and where, but your elitist eyes can't see it.

To the contrary or we'd be the safest country on the planet instead of being markedly the opposite on the point among all the Western democracies.

We are safer in areas where gun ownership rates are higher. We should spread those gun ownership rates to areas where the murder rate is high so we'll have lower murder rates as a country.

And there are any number of ways to express that, but you chose poorly by drawing one where the impact was violence where the actual impact is its opposite.

There's no better analogy than the cliff analogy.

I think you're charitable enough with yourself for both of us and I absolutely realized the point.

Yes, your response was directly uncharitable. You definitely got the point. Echoing Picasso, you know how to be charitable like a pro so you can be artistically uncharitable.

 

[Town Heretic]

Meanwhile, today in Kentucky a boy with a handgun shot and killed 2 classmates while wounding 12 others, bringing January's totals to 31 dead and 71 wounded in mass shootings to date.

 

[Town Heretic]

So you'll agree that if we find out that most people with a post graduate degree believe in government intervention in the economy on the scale we see today, or more, that we could consider them to have a lack of virtue and wisdom?

No. I was just curious as to why you thought that and if there was any actual support for it empirically.

It is what you wrote.

No, but if you honestly believe you know what I wrote better than I know what I wrote there's no real point in writing anything.

I think you would use a legal definition in order to confuse people.

Lucky break for you that you don't think something else, eh?

Beyond that, I think only you, and people with your elitist mindset are confused about what defending themselves means

I think it's funny that you call me an elitist then cast yourself inferentially in a superior light...but then, I have a good sense of humor.

So who owns the guns? The government or the people that bought them?

When did goods become more important than lives?

Except by taking everyone's gun and making them re-buy lesser guns in their place

Again, they're better than what the Founders were thinking about when they penned the right into legal protection. And those guns can accomplish everything the Founders intended that remains a public need (our army being a standing one now and the need for a civil militia having gone by the boards).

Do you really think that doesn't have the intention of lowering with ownership rates?

I think that if you only want to own a gun when you can kill dozens of people with it in short order it isn't the gun you want, but the means to an end. So no, it shouldn't lower ownership rates except among the sort of people who no rational person would want to see armed.

I can see you aren't emotional - you're as cold as ice in light of your willingness to send kids to be prostitutes and to be mutilated because of apathy.

I'm not saying you're stupid, but if you believe that I'm about as unlikely to say you aren't.

But most notably, you implied that mothers are best for children in cases of divorce

No, I didn't.

with no support, and ignored the evidence that fathers are best for kids in case of divorce.

And no, they aren't.

Let's say you force everyone (not in the government) to give up their non-breach loading guns and the murder rates don't go down

Rather, let's say that when we enact universal, tough gun laws gun violence and mass shooting will be dramatically impacted. Because that's what happens everywhere it's done.

 

[Yorzhik]

No. I was just curious as to why you thought that and if there was any actual support for it empirically.

If there is support for it will you admit that means higher academia lacks wisdom and virtue?

No, but if you honestly believe you know what I wrote better than I know what I wrote there's no real point in writing anything.

If you don't mean to say what you are writing, then don't write it.

Lucky break for you that you don't think something else, eh?

Me being right isn't as much luck as it is a deliberate hard journey to the truth. Again, I consider your ideas and check them to see if they are right before saying they are wrong, and I think you make some good points. What good points have I made?

Now; I've noticed you STILL won't provide a definition. Even so, I predict that when you finally do provide a definition it will be narrow and designed to avoid a common understanding. And probably when it is pointed out that it is narrow and not commonly understood that you will counter that only the elites can understand it implying we little people should just shut up and do as we're told.

So let's hear your definition.

I think it's funny that you call me an elitist then cast yourself inferentially in a superior light...but then, I have a good sense of humor.

That still isn't a definition.

When did goods become more important than lives?

When getting rid of goods will cost more lives. Obviously you aren't even considering the cost of lives since you only count lives lost to mass shootings.

If the only lives you count are the lives lost in mass shootings, then you aren't caring about the lives lost when people cannot defend themselves properly or when bureaucrats have more control over people's lives.

This is one reason why focusing on mass shootings is disingenuous.

So at the risk of a tangent, I'll bring up ROEvWADE again. If the justices were wise and virtuous, they would have understood that the only question that needed to be answered was "when does a baby become a human?". And by the same reasoning you are asking the wrong question about self defense. It shows the same elitist lack of wisdom and virtue.

Again, they're better than what the Founders were thinking about when they penned the right into legal protection. And those guns can accomplish everything the Founders intended that remains a public need (our army being a standing one now and the need for a civil militia having gone by the boards).

I think that if you only want to own a gun when you can kill dozens of people with it in short order it isn't the gun you want, but the means to an end. So no, it shouldn't lower ownership rates except among the sort of people who no rational person would want to see armed.

There are many other reasons to own a non-single shot gun other than for mass shootings, so you are simply and flatly wrong in your assessment of people.

I'm not saying you're stupid, but if you believe that I'm about as unlikely to say you aren't.

You're the one saying you support children being used as prostitutes and being mutilated so they can be better beggers. So call me stupid if you like but at least I care about children. I'm not saying you're mercyless, but if you believe the status quo I'm about as unlikely to say you aren't.

But most notably, you implied that mothers are best for children in cases of divorce

No, I didn't.

So you don't support the current system? The current system says that about 75-80 percent of mothers are best for kids.

with no support, and ignored the evidence that fathers are best for kids in case of divorce.

And no, they aren't.

Yes they are according to science, tradition, common sense, and God's opinion. So excuse me if I find your declarative lacking in substance.

Rather, let's say that when we enact universal, tough gun laws gun violence and mass shooting will be dramatically impacted. Because that's what happens everywhere it's done.

You can keep declaring this in spite of the evidence, but it just shows you rely on rhetoric, which is emotion. So accept it when someone accuses you of using emotion to force your will on society instead of wisdom and virtue.

There are a number of things I'm curious about that you didn't reply to.

1) It's only the least safest place if you go to certain areas, which consequently, have low gun ownership rates. If you go to places with high gun ownership rates one will tend to be in a safe place.

2) You never rebutted. You only ignored. But now that you bring it up, what is the foundation of law? Isn't it life liberty and property?

3) Do the schools expect the children to cheat or not cheat in their homework? Do the schools expect the children to listen in school? Do the schools expect the children to get their work done on time? Do the schools expect the children to respect school property? Do the schools expect the children to be nice to one another while in school?

4) The evidence you ignored showed the poverty rate evened out in the 70's, while government spending on programs that rely on income levels has skyrocketed through today.

5) You believe anyone that needs a gun for their job should have one that is at least semi-automatic.

5b) And you believe criminals won't love putting their semi-autos up against breach loaders?

6) You realized you were wrong about the size of black markets. Can you see my point now?

7) I think you miss the point of the Nazi gun control program. It's not that the Jews would have been able to resist the regime, but that they were targeted because of registration. That is a part of history, and not a "what if" scenario.

8)

Yor believes that suggesting we wipe existing law off the books and retool our entire approach to justice is the way to go.

I don't believe that. But certainly your elitist mindset would lead you to believing that I do.

9) Who owns the guns you are taking by force?

10)

My solutions, from small implementations to large are not only reversible but measurable

Answered prior and more than once.

Never answered. You never showed how what I propose couldn't be implemented slowly and be reversed if necessary. And I showed you the measurement you could judge me by.

11) You missed the Picasso quote. He was saying that learning the rules very well is a good way to know how to break them. Likewise, I think you understand the rules of reading charitably very well to maximize your uncharitable comments.

 

[patrick jane]

 

[Town Heretic]

That would be a great counter if I was suggesting people give up their right to bear arms...well, no, it wouldn't be unless you consider yourself a subdued foreign power. And if you consider yourself a subdued foreign power you might have bigger fish to fry. lain:

 

[Town Heretic]

If there is support for it will you admit that means higher academia lacks wisdom and virtue?

I answered that in the quote you posted before writing this...no. It's an intellectually unsupported assertion.

If you don't mean to say what you are writing, then don't write it.

That's not the problem. The problem is your insisting I mean something else. That I can't control.

Me being right isn't as much luck as it is a deliberate hard journey to the truth.

So it's like humility then. You just worked your way into it. lain: That's my subtle way of suggesting that declaring yourself right is about as meaningful as declaring yourself tall.

Again, I consider your ideas and check them to see if they are right before saying they are wrong, and I think you make some good points. What good points have I made?

Wait. What good points have you considered mine?

Now; I've noticed you STILL won't provide a definition.

I also won't make you a sandwich, unless I know you're really hungry and need one. Then I'd be happy to, because it would matter.

Even so, I predict that when you finally do provide a definition it will be narrow and designed to avoid a common understanding. And probably when it is pointed out that it is narrow and not commonly understood that you will counter that only the elites can understand it implying we little people should just shut up and do as we're told.

That would be something...I mean considering you're the one who brought up and uses the whole elite term and I've only responded in an attempt to make more than one of those stand-ins for suspecting people of intelligence and/or education.

So let's hear your definition.

Supra.

That still isn't a definition.

It also wasn't a potato. lain:

When getting rid of goods will cost more lives.

Which no one (by which I mean you) has made the case would be the case and which the empirical data on hand (by which I mean the difference between us and every other western democracy in terms of gun violence and mass shooting rates) fails to support.

Obviously you aren't even considering the cost of lives since you only count lives lost to mass shootings.

Well, in fairness that was the topic, though I did note gun violence on the whole as well.

If the only lives you count are the lives lost in mass shootings, then you aren't caring about the lives lost when people cannot defend themselves properly or when bureaucrats have more control over people's lives.

Again, that's as daft a notion as suggesting if we talk about one disease without talking about every we don't care. So you're really just criticizing me for staying on topic. And again, I've spoken to gun violence beyond mass shootings.

This is one reason why focusing on mass shootings is disingenuous.

The reason for the focus is that it was the topic and it can be dramatically impacted. The disingenuous is your tack on, but it's only that.

So at the risk of a tangent, I'll bring up ROEvWADE again. If the justices were wise and virtuous, they would have understood that the only question that needed to be answered was "when does a baby become a human?". And by the same reasoning you are asking the wrong question about self defense. It shows the same elitist lack of wisdom and virtue.

Yes, yes, everyone knows that wise and virtuous men never err. Take King David, for example...well, no. I mean Solomon. Solomon, the wisest of...well, no. He failed spectacularly, didn't he. So on Roe, it's an unrelated argument and I've offered arguments against the decision. They also got slavery wrong. And I think treating corporations like people is screwy too. It happens.

But you're really the elitist between us, talking down to people because they're better educated is just a sort of reverse discrimination and as unseated in reason.

There are many other reasons to own a non-single shot gun other than for mass shootings, so you are simply and flatly wrong in your assessment of people.

I never said people lack reasons. I said that the guns I'm talking about remaining legal would leave anyone owning them in a superior position to anyone who lived during the time of the Founders when they wrote the right and that owning the guns I note would permit a person to do anything any other gun could do other than kill a lot of people in short order.

You're the one saying you support children being used as prostitutes and being mutilated

Well, no. Which is why you might repeat the charge but will never sustain it by, you know, quoting me and whatnot. It's a silly, sad depth to see in anyone.

So call me stupid if you like

When did I do that? :think: I don't believe that's stupid so much as just plainly unsupportable and of questionable rationality.

but at least I care about children.

And apple pie too, I'd bet. Pet a dog if it came up to you. That sort of thing.

So you don't support the current system?

Almost all of the dispositions relating to the placement of children occur by negotiation between parents. You don't like what they're deciding take it up with them.

Yes they are according to science, tradition, common sense, and God's opinion. So excuse me if I find your declarative lacking in substance.

You declared a thing true that's simply not. I didn't feel like giving it more effort than you were obliged to put into the proffer.

You can keep declaring this in spite of the evidence, but it just shows you rely on rhetoric, which is emotion.

Nah. I've never been the emotional sort, rhetorically, though reason can support positions that resonate emotionally, like in my opposition to abortion. The evidence of the disparity, the dramatically lower rates of gun violence and death by firearms in every western democracy, the lower rates in every U.S. state where stronger laws are found compared to their more lax neighbors is irrefutable and has been presented prior and cited.

So accept it when someone accuses you of using emotion to force your will on society instead of wisdom and virtue.

You can say I'm using a shoe horn if you like but it won't make that or your misguided self lauding any more true.

There are a number of things I'm curious about that you didn't reply to.

Okay.

3) Do the schools expect the children to cheat or not cheat in their homework? Do the schools expect the children to listen in school? Do the schools expect the children to get their work done on time? Do the schools expect the children to respect school property? Do the schools expect the children to be nice to one another while in school?

You're attempting, I suppose, to suggest that having any rules is an instruction in character. That's a pretty thin stretch.

4) The evidence you ignored showed the poverty rate evened out in the 70's, while government spending on programs that rely on income levels has skyrocketed through today.

So you're saying it costs more today to hold ground? Do tell. You want to compare the price of a sports car then to now while you're at it?

5) You believe anyone that needs a gun for their job should have one that is at least semi-automatic.

That's not a question. So it has a lot in common with your "arguments".

5b) And you believe criminals won't love putting their semi-autos up against breach loaders?

You could argue machine guns against semi-autos and have the same problem in premise.

7) I think you miss the point of the Nazi gun control program.

No, I spoke to the particulars. I think you're trying to misuse the illustration.

It's not that the Jews would have been able to resist the regime, but that they were targeted because of registration. That is a part of history, and not a "what if" scenario.

They weren't targeted because of registration. That's a peculiar thing to attempt. They were targeted because they were Jews. And they were being treated differently than the rest of the Germans who weren't so bothered by it. So, not particularly universal...or particularly resembling anything I'm talking about. It only connects to the paranoid government out to get everyone mentality that is at its core irrational in a republic run by those same people, when they're so inclined.

9) Who owns the guns you are taking by force?

If you have to be forced to obey the law you have a bigger problem than trying to make the government look like thieves.

10)

My solutions, from small implementations to large are not only reversible but measurable

Rather, they're impossible, foundational and a de facto nod to the status quo, even if you don't mean for them to be.

11) You missed the Picasso quote.

So you say. But then, considering some of what you say...

He was saying that learning the rules very well is a good way to know how to break them. Likewise, I think you understand the rules of reading charitably very well to maximize your uncharitable comments.

You can think a ham and rye is a ribeye, but it's still not. :e4e:

 

[Town Heretic]

Meanwhile...from the Huff. Post dated today:

First State Ban On Bump Stocks Takes Effect After Las Vegas Massacre


A Massachusetts law banning possession of bump stocks and other accessories that increase a gun’s rate of fire went into effect on Thursday, making the state the first to enact such legislation in the wake of last year’s deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas.

The move is not the first, as California and New York had banned them prior to the Las Vegas mass shooting.

And a slow march from madness begins.

 

[Town Heretic]

Today a 19 year old went into a school in Florida. He was armed with an AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon, and multiple magazines. Before he was stopped and arrested he'd murdered 17 people and injured 14 others.

 

[This Charming Manc]

Come on you know it was nothing to do with guns ....

It was a false flag ....

A person can be killed with a spoon, don't you want to ban spoons instead?

If only every pupil had an AR15 this wouldn't have happened....

If we armed teachers with rocket launchers .....

Having our children murdered with automatic weapons is the price of a free society!!

Sorry its a sad day but i'm tired of the same tired arguments that will be rolled out with undue haste.

Thought and prayers to victims is hypocrisy, if attached to a failure to act.