why anyone wants an "assault rifle"

dteowner said:
Unfortunately, DArt, that's simply not the essence of the thing. That logic simply doesn't get through - because the people who fail to argue against it keep trying to ignore it over and over again. You choose to ignore the conditions and situations and responsibility revolving around the misuse of a tool by people with intent that falls outside the bounds of decent society. You choose to punish the millions of people that use those tools properly because you lack the willpower to address the real problem. It's all "needless dead" to you. You're entitled to that choice, but you're not entitled to force it on others because you lack the basic logic to make it a reasonable expectation.
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Yes, people will have to do without guns to save lives. You should be proud to go that way - but people are selfish and ignorant, so I guess not.

I choose to focus on what's doable.

Debating alternatives is fine - but people are being killed while you cry about being "punished".

Once you figure out how to make a gun that can't kill the wrong people - I'll be more than happy to support your right to wield deadly arms because you get a kick out of it.

Until then, your insignificant right to own the means to kill people easily will have to be removed.

These rights were invented to protect people, not to kill them. Times were different and society has evolved. Let's try not to hold it back more than we have to, just because you don't mind innocent people dying. That's not a good reason.

There's no logic you can come up with that takes away the fact that you're clearly stating that your right to own a gun is more important to you than keeping more people alive.

That's what you're saying, end of story.
 
DArtagnan said:
There's no logic you can come up with that takes away the fact that you're clearly stating that your right to own a gun is more important to you than keeping more people alive.

That's what you're saying, end of story.
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Indeed, and you're once again proving that you choose to ignore context. The right to own a gun is more important to me than keeping alive, say, a guy that will rape and murder an 8-month pregnant woman. Had that woman had a basic level of training and a handgun, perhaps you could explain to her and her child how important it was to keep that guy alive. As it is, I guess you'll just have to celebrate that no guns were involved in that particular crime.
 
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dteowner said:
Indeed, and you're once again proving that you choose to ignore context. The right to own a gun is more important to me than keeping alive, say, a guy that will rape and murder an 8-month pregnant woman. Had that woman had a basic level of training and a handgun, perhaps you could explain to her and her child how important it was to keep that guy alive. As it is, I guess you'll just have to celebrate that no guns were involved in that particular crime.
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Oh, cry me a river. She's a pregnant woman that survives - while we're saving the lives of countless people because we take away the means to kill easily.

Logic doesn't change because you try manipulate emotions like a weary politician.

Exchange that woman for a single crazy guy owning a dozen guns because it's so cool, is that the same scenario?

Yeah, actually.

Guns are involved and guns get people killed - A LOT of people.

She can learn self-defense and kick ass instead - or do you really insist on the rapist being killed?

That would make you feel great, right?

When you make a decision about what's the best course of action, you don't stare yourself blind at the bad things involved.

You look at the good and then you look at the bad.

I know you're just human and you can't get that Hollywood scenario out of your mind. But we need brains to to decide this, not hearts.
 
Allow me to fill in some details of the woman you're so quick to sacrifice:
The following day, February 12, two hikers found the body of Joy Stewart in some woods near Bantas Creek. The front of her shirt was saturated with blood. One deputy sheriff at the scene, Larry Swihart, also noted that there appeared to be a "blood wipe mark" on her right arm.

The body was taken to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, where an autopsy was performed. The autopsy revealed that Joy had been stabbed twice. One wound, located above the left collarbone, caused no significant injury. The critical wound was a four-and-a-half-inch-deep cut in the throat, which completely severed the carotid artery and jugular vein.

The doctor determined that Joy was alive when she received the wound, and that such a wound could have been caused by a single-edged blade shorter than four and a half inches, due to "how soft and moveable the tissues are in the neck." The autopsy also revealed abrasions around the neck, impressed with the cloth pattern of Joy’s shirt. The coroner’s office also took vaginal, oral, and anal swabs.

The coroner found an abundant amount of sperm on the anal swab, some sperm on the vaginal swab, and none on the oral swab. The coroner indicated that sperm could be detected in the vagina for days or sometimes weeks after ejaculation; however, sperm in the rectum could be detected for a lesser time "because the environment is fairly hostile for sperm, and a bowel movement usually will purge the rectum of any sperm." Investigator David Lindloff of the Preble County Prosecutor’s Office investigated the murder, but to no immediate avail.
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All I can say is thank the Galactic Spaghetti Monster that no guns were used. We're all safer for it. Well, all of us except Joy and her unborn child. They're not really much safer, are they? But you assured me! How does this happen in a total absence of guns?

And yes, I would feel great had this animal been killed. If you're seriously going to expect an 8-month pregant woman to engage in "self-defense and kick ass", you're intentionally being dense.
 
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dteowner said:
@Mike- so then, you seek to ban things that are designed for the sole purpose of killing that can be misused by people with violent intent? Will you be parading outside of the D-Con folks today? Thought not. Why not?
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I NEVER (repeat NEVER) said, advocated or even SUGGESTED banning ANYTHING. My aim was pretty simple:

Gain a common ground that guns are designed to kill. Period.

Your paragraph above is the closest I have seen from yourself and others who keep trying to conflate all sorts of nonsense.

And I understand why - because once you admit that unlike a car, spoon, loaf of bread, pair of sneakers, cup of coffee, or other things that might incidentally lead to death ... that guns are actually DESIGNED with death (again, not about human, just in general) as the main purpose. Once you allow that clarity of purpose, then you lose the 'should we ban cars and water' argument.

Which is, of course, a total nonsense argument - even worse than all the anti-science morons who on EVERY cold day say 'where is global warming now'. (not saying there aren't some valid points of debate in that area, but cold weather is NOT one of them)
 
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You're tap dancing and you know it. Do you seek to regulate the ownership of rat poison, or not? I'm following your logic line by line here, you know. It's a device designed solely for killing (and I'm granting you that angle on guns without a fight for the purposes of this line of questioning, giving you every advantage here). It's a device that has been misused for violent intent. Therefore, ownership should be severely regulated, if not banned completely.

Make your stand, champ. Either be consistent with your tortured logic, or own up to its ridiculous nature.
 
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dteowner said:
You're tap dancing and you know it. Do you seek to regulate the ownership of rat poison, or not? I'm following your logic line by line here, you know. It's a device designed solely for killing (and I'm granting you that angle on guns without a fight for the purposes of this line of questioning, giving you every advantage here). It's a device that has been misused for violent intent. Therefore, ownership should be severely regulated, if not banned completely.
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Actually not - folks like 'mudsling' actually challenged that guns are designed to kill, by using 'defend' and lobbing personal insults and not much else. Others including yourself have tried to confuse the core issue by stating that ANYTHING can kill, so if we want to regulate guns we need to regulate EVERYTHING.

And that has brought me to a sticking point. Because the reason that line of argument makes no sense is because whereas water is both a naturally occurring material and essential to life, and whereas a car was designed for transport, a gun was designed explicitly for the battlefield as a military weapon - in other words, designed with the singular intent of killing.

SO ... what I needed to do was at least gain common ground. I am not trying 'weasel logic' to try to trip someone up or leverage an admission into a later logical trap. I am looking for just a basic shared understanding as a starting point: and that understanding is that guns were designed singly as weapons of death.

I would be very happy to return to a reasonable discussion - but I need to be clear that we possess this basic shared understanding.

I actually support the second amendment, but DO believe that a person's 'right to life' ABSOLUTELY trumps the right to own guns. So similar to first amendment not being absolute in the case it threatens life, so too should threats to life be a consideration around the second amendment.

So ... can we move forward?
 
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What's unreasonable about using your logic? That's all I'm doing. If it's reasonable discussion for you to make the argument, it should be reasonable discussion for me to use your argument line-for-line to show your inconsistency.

You're very hung up on the designed purpose for guns. Fine. I give you another product that has the same designed purpose and the same history of misuse (and the same potential for accidents and the same potential for use/misuse by children, for that matter), but you don't want to talk about it. Either "designed purpose" is important to your point, in which case I should be able to use it as well, or "designed purpose" is a distraction you've thrown in to avoid dealing with your inconsistency. So which shall it be? Even if I magically grant you 100% agreement on your "designed purpose" point, it goes nowhere because you refuse to see that point applied to situations that put it in the bad light it deserves. Which shall it be?
 
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Actually, YOU are tap-dancing and using weasel logic. Because we aren't talking about other things - not yet. I will gladly step outside this once we hit common ground - and 'granting me' or 'humoring me' or whatever other bullshit terms you want to use is NOT the same.

Gun = designed to kill.

TRUE / FALSE.

Period.

No more BS until we pass go.
 
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True.

However, I will be sorely disappointed should you now bail on the rat poison question. Similarly, if you choose to go down DArt's "death without context" road, I'll be pulling the same childish footstomping that you're employing so well here.
 
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dteowner said:
True.
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Thank you. :)

Do you know the most dangerous place in terms of accidents? The home. Why? Because the home is loaded with as many toxic chemicals and dangerous devices as the workplace, but without any of the regulations, required training, PPE and storage restrictions.

In other words, I agree with you - rat poison, Raid, and other things that are incredibly toxic by design, need special treatment, storage and regulation.

Why? Because thousands of people every year die due to mis-handling, poor storage, and so on.

I really think that in order to have products with a certain known toxicity you should have an XP-rated chem cabinet in your house (we have a locked metal locker ... not XP) and it would be very interesting if your homeowners required such a thing.

Sadly I don't ever see it happening - and would be most strongly protested from the right.

Why? In the name of 'personal freedom'. In other words, their right to be stupid trumps the right to public safety.

Funny story - last year two women from surrounding houses were chatting on our lawn with their dogs. When my wife and I approached them, they said it was because their lawns were being treated and the company told them it was toxic to dogs and cats. We asked 'what about all the other animals in the area (including our cat) and they said 'oh, you might want to keep your cat in, but we can't control the others'.

That is how things go - we have no problem spreading death if it makes our grass greener.

See? I agree - which is why I wanted to move on!
 
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dteowner said:
Allow me to fill in some details of the woman you're so quick to sacrifice:

All I can say is thank the Galactic Spaghetti Monster that no guns were used. We're all safer for it. Well, all of us except Joy and her unborn child. They're not really much safer, are they? But you assured me! How does this happen in a total absence of guns?

And yes, I would feel great had this animal been killed. If you're seriously going to expect an 8-month pregant woman to engage in "self-defense and kick ass", you're intentionally being dense.
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So, instead of responding to my point about the good versus the bad, you instead go cry an even larger river about this woman - as if that somehow made your position reasonable or logical.

Unfortunately, I'm not that easy to manipulate.

Guns kill more people than they save - which is so evident, I'm surprised people who don't know this can even spell.
 
So then, you favor regulations to protect people from themselves. Where does that stop? When does personal responsibility come into play? For now, it appears that a significant portion of society (and the vast majority of snarky Euros) has decided that the line belongs just below guns. Why? Cuz they know best. Logic for it? Don't need no stinkin logic. When do we get far enough down the Pareto of Death (trademark pending) that we're satisfied?
 
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DArtagnan said:
So, instead of responding to my point about the good versus the bad, you instead go cry an even larger river about this woman - as if that somehow made your position reasonable or logical.

Unfortunately, I'm not that easy to manipulate.

Guns kill more people than they save - which is so evident, I'm surprised people who don't know this can even spell.
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If you choose not to differentiate between the following examples of violence by gun, we don't even have a framework to work from.
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news...Gruesome-Murder-Suicide-Police-222643001.html
http://www.wdrb.com/story/24418649/police-say-east-louisville-robbery-victim-pulled-gun-shot-robber
 
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dteowner said:
So then, you favor regulations to protect people from themselves. Where does that stop? When does personal responsibility come into play? For now, it appears that a significant portion of society (and the vast majority of snarky Euros) has decided that the line belongs just below guns. Why? Cuz they know best. Logic for it? Don't need no stinkin logic. When do we get far enough down the Pareto of Death (trademark pending) that we're satisfied?
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It stops when it no longer does more good than harm.

Complex stuff, I know.
 
DArtagnan said:
It stops when it no longer does more good than harm.

Complex stuff, I know.
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That definition is subjective to the point of absurdity. Not fit for picking what to have for lunch, let alone setting public policy.
 
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DArtagnan said:
Different people, different reasons, same result = dead people. I'd like fewer dead people.

Complex stuff, I know.
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I'm afraid we have no framework for discussion, then. Remove guns from both of those situations and it's entirely possible and even predictable that nothing changes in the first situation while things get much worse in the second situation. Thus, I'll be expecting you to arm us all in the name of fewer dead people.
 
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dteowner said:
That definition is subjective to the point of absurdity. Not fit for picking what to have for lunch, let alone setting public policy.
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It's not a definition, it's an answer to when it stops.

In the real world, you have to look at things in a wholesome way to make a good decision, and you have to know about details before you can make a judgment call like that.

That's why issues are handled separately and through a long process.

I'm talking about gun control and doing everything we can to limit the amount of guns on the street.

Thankfully, a lot of civilised countries have figured this out - and the world has become a much safer place overall.

That's not the case in America, however - because you seem to care more about guns than lives.

When another issue comes around that I care about and that I feel comfortable offering my opinion on, I'll talk about that.

You asked a complex question using simple words and I gave you a suitable answer.

If you want a more wholesome answer, you'll have to do the work and ask me a fair question.
 
dteowner said:
I'm afraid we have no framework for discussion, then. Remove guns from both of those situations and it's entirely possible and even predictable that nothing changes in the first situation while things get much worse in the second situation. Thus, I'll be expecting you to arm us all in the name of fewer dead people.
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If you think you get to decide what would happen without guns, then you're right - we have no framework.

I can only carry a reasonable debate with reasonable people.

That said, I'm not talking about specific cases pulled out of a hat - but about the excessively simple logic that without guns - fewer people would be killed, because guns are so easy to kill with.

If you really think that everyone in the world who has ever shot someone would kill even without a gun - then you're…. not realistic.

To use your "impressive" approach, why don't you describe what you think would have happened during the Breivik incident without guns? Maybe the Sandy Hook incident?

Explain how so many people would have been killed without access to guns.
 
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