I love a story with a happy ending.

If it's not black or white, DTE can't perceive it.

It's a American thing; you can only have 2 alternatives (keep it simple stupid). Black/White, Left/Right, Blue/Red, You get the picture!!

Unfortunately for some couldn't even see the black and white. The natural right for self-defence proceeds and after any form of gov coming into existance. As much as these gun haters/fearers detest "violence", they could, without a light touch of shame to appeal to the organized violence of gov to take away right from ordinary law abiding gun owers.

by the way, if those still have a few braincells left, recall DTE earlier comments are for some form of gun control.

Pladio said:

dte I think u forgot to reply to my post…

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No, I thought the difference was fairly obvious- police largely work after the fact. Your proposal is based on Minority Report logic.

Thrasher said:

If it's not black or white, DTE can't perceive it.

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Throw enough grey around, and you can justify anything, including genocide. I don't see a desire to drive toward objective thought and logical analysis as a bad thing, but I'm not surprised that people that want to do things "just cuz I know what's best for the world" would scoff at the approach.

Yes, Minority Report was about stopping violent crimes we know will happen - so that fits.

Your point being?

dteowner said:

Throw enough grey around, and you can justify anything, including genocide. I don't see a desire to drive toward objective thought and logical analysis as a bad thing, but I'm not surprised that people that want to do things "just cuz I know what's best for the world" would scoff at the approach.

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You're right about logic being useful - so when do you start applying logic instead of polar opposite extremes to every point you want to counter?

dteowner said:

No, I thought the difference was fairly obvious- police largely work after the fact. Your proposal is based on Minority Report logic.

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Are you kidding ?

What's the point of having police and guards protect public areas ? What about police patrols ? What about police escorts ? You really think it's only in case something happens ?

They all act as deterrents. They're not just there to wait for something to happen.
They're there so that nothing does happen.

DArtagnan said:

You're right about logic being useful - so when do you start applying logic instead of polar opposite extremes to every point you want to counter?

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I showed the folly of your logic. I used simple and extreme examples, which as you know will sacrifice specificity in return for the simplicity, but you use that same technique and have clearly stated in the past that you're amenable to it. Corwin even pointed out to you that my approach was correct. I'm sorry if the logical slap in the face was uncomfortable, but I did make an effort not to rub your nose in it. You've already determined that you're right, so logic doesn't really enter into it for you any more. To blame me for that just shows how sorry your logic must be. If you're good with that, then more power to ya, but I don't see much basis for insulting me over it.

Pladio said:

Are you kidding ?

What's the point of having police and guards protect public areas ? What about police patrols ? What about police escorts ? You really think it's only in case something happens ?

They all act as deterrents. They're not just there to wait for something to happen.
They're there so that nothing does happen.

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So you're saying that your totally irrational criminal (your claim, not mine) might make a rational judgment based on the risk associated with a situation? Yes or no will do fine.

dteowner said:

I showed the folly of your logic. I used simple examples, which as you know will sacrifice specificity in return for the simplicity, but you use that same technique and have clearly stated in the past that you're amenable to it. Corwin even pointed out to you that my approach was correct. I'm sorry if the logical slap in the face was uncomfortable, but I did make an effort not to rub your nose in it. You've already determined that you're right, so logic doesn't really enter into it for you any more. To blame me for that just shows how sorry your logic must be. If you're good with that, then more power to ya, but I don't see much basis for insulting me over it.

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I'm sure you live in a fantasy world where your irrational application of what you refer to as logic is somehow useful - but in the real world, it's only useful in terms of demonstrating that your ability to apply it and get your point across is of an exceedingly limited nature.

As for Corwin, I like the guy - but I don't throw away my rational mind and start blindly adhering to questionable input based on that fondness.

I don't mean to insult you. I'm just being blunt about what you're doing - because that leaves less room for misinterpretation. There's nothing personal about it, and you should know better about me by now.

You really do tend to think in extremes - and you're constantly overlooking the middleground covering ~99% of reality. It's fine to use extremes if the subject is within that ~1% of reality that deals exclusively with them - but as implied that's almost never the case.

Oh, and I never "determine" that I'm right - but I tend to believe very strongly in my opinions, especially when they're related to things that I know a lot about.

For me to change my opinion requires some very convincing and - most of all - rational arguments. Not something I've seen a lot of from people supporting widespread access to firearms. I'm sorry if that comes off as being "determined" that I can't be wrong - but it's not really what it is.

Certainly no more than is true for yourself and your apparent belief in your own position.

dteowner said:

So you're saying that your totally irrational criminal (your claim, not mine) might make a rational judgment based on the risk associated with a situation? Yes or no will do fine.

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It's not (always) the risk, it's the difficulty too. So since he will have to go through police officers to achieve his goal of killing people watching a football match he might decide not to do it. Just as having to go through having to go out and find out where to buy a gun (since he cannot get his hands on one in his home) might deter him.

Also, the irrationality I was talking about was during the crime. They are not always thinking about the consequences, but they might be thinking about their goals. So while they do not care if they end up dead or in jail, they might care whether or not their goals were achieved. Irrationality is also not a black/white thing. They still have a thought process, just one that you or I would think to be irrational.

Example of the Sandy Hook guy:
Normal life, go watch movies in basement.
Moment of anger:
Scenario 1 : Gun in box, opens box kills mom, goes even crazier and shoots up kids.
Scenario 2 : No gun in box, finds a hammer and clubs his mom to death, goes to school with hammer and tries hitting a kid, all teachers jump on him and stop him.
Scenario 3 : No gun in box, clubs mom to death, goes out to buy some guns and then shoots up kids
Scenario 4 : No gun in box, hits mom till she needs to go to the hospital, he goes to court for abuse
Scenario 5 : No gun in box, shouts at mom

So, yes he could still have ended up going to the school to kill those kids. But no one knows that. What I know for sure is that if that gun would not have been in the house he would have had to put a lot more effort to find one and go and kill people - in comparison to opening a box in his house and taking the gun out.

Yes, for the cinema guy who went and found 10 machine guns to shoot up the cinema, it would not have stopped him as it was a premeditated thing. He took his sweet time to collect machine guns and rifles. So that's again an entirely different story and people who do that will (probably) not be stopped by more restrictive gun control.


But wouldn't it be worth not having a gun in that mom's house if it would have stopped him from killing all those children ?

Again, the point is not to remove all crime, but to reduce parts of it.

(Sidenote: Dte, you really need to stop thinking in extremes. It hampers your thinking. Things are not always yes or no answers. It's not always clear what the best thing to do is. It's not even always clear what best is.)

I notice that you didn't answer the question, Pladio. I suppose the bind was simply too obvious. If you say "yes", then you undercut your own argument about criminals being irrational. If you say "no", then you undercut your own argument about potential victims being armed not being a deterrent. You'll note that either way, you shoot another hole in a logical structure that already looks like swiss cheese.

If your argument is so weak that you're unable to answer a simple question in any fashion without undercutting and/or contradicting yourself, what does that say? It says that I don't think right. Gotcha.

Pladio said:

Yes, for the cinema guy who went and found 10 machine guns to shoot up the cinema, it would not have stopped him as it was a premeditated thing. He took his sweet time to collect machine guns and rifles. So that's again an entirely different story and people who do that will (probably) not be stopped by more restrictive gun control.

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The Colorado shooting? He had an assault rifle, shotguns, and handguns. All legally owned mind you. From the apparently large number of rounds fired I assume that he mostly used the assault rifle, which would be illegal in most other countries. So gun laws probably would not have stopped him, but it would have been much harder for him to collect that arsenal (particularly the assault rifle) in most other countries, and it might have been more suspicous if he had tried. So gun laws certainly helped him be as "effective" as he was.

DArtagnan said:

I don't mean to insult you. I'm just being blunt about what you're doing - because that leaves less room for misinterpretation. There's nothing personal about it, and you should know better about me by now.

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Not to worry, I'm not taking it personal at all. I'm certainly not above a snipe or three myself. I just find it rather pointless when it is easily demonstrated to be baseless, and it tends to feed the monkeys if ya know what I mean.

DArtagnan said:

You really do tend to think in extremes - and you're constantly overlooking the middleground covering ~99% of reality. It's fine to use extremes if the subject is within that ~1% of reality that deals exclusively with them - but as implied that's almost never the case.

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As mentioned earlier, I try to drive toward the objective. Any opinion based on objective facts has more merit than one based on subjective fuzziness. That's simply undeniable. Objective facts are, by their very nature, stark and extreme, so yes, I very much prefer to deal in extremes if that's how you wish to view it. Beyond that, I highly value consistency- the application of solutions based on objective fact toward different problems. Obviously, I'm not so stupid as to believe that solutions can be cut-n-paste'd across every problem in the world, but a "good" solution to any problem should be able to serve as a starting point for many other problems IF that solution is based on objective facts. If you can't manage that, it not only leaves you empty-handed on the current problem, but it should call into question just how "good" your first solution is. It's when you base everything on subjective mumbo jumbo that you're locked into treating every single problem as something completely unique that requires a completely unique solution from the ground up. Building everything from scratch is needlessly time consuming and significantly increases the risk of error. The more subjectivity you allow into the discussion, the more limited your solution becomes--not only do you have the differences problem-to-problem, but you add differences viewer-to-viewer. Why do that? How can that possibly be a preferred approach?

Conservatives recognize the moral necessity of harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. These aspects need a balance for society to function and to reduce harm. Hard-line liberals recognize only the first two which cause them to appear as if they have an "anything goes" approach to morality. They want to reduce harm/care but they do not see how throwing loyalty, duty, respect etc out of the window to save someone or something may actually boost harm.

That said, an intelligent conservative with poor knowledge and general awareness do a poor job of handling their moral instincts. They may strive for a stability and continuity that isn't stable or continuous in the first place, such as supporting unstable authorities, unstable group categories, unstable hierarchies and unstable principles.

A certain logic or principle may therefore appear both logic and just, when it's actually single-minded.

dteowner said:

I notice that you didn't answer the question, Pladio. I suppose the bind was simply too obvious. If you say "yes", then you undercut your own argument about criminals being irrational. If you say "no", then you undercut your own argument about potential victims being armed not being a deterrent. You'll note that either way, you shoot another hole in a logical structure that already looks like swiss cheese.

If your argument is so weak that you're unable to answer a simple question in any fashion without undercutting and/or contradicting yourself, what does that say? It says that I don't think right. Gotcha.

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Uhm, no. It means your question is trying to simplify a problem that isn't so simple.

Pladio said:

Uhm, no. It means your question is trying to simplify a problem that isn't so simple.

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If you're content standing on a pile of crap that can't even hold up to a single prod without falling in on itself, you're welcome to it. I'm not sure how your choice to be foolish somehow defines me as extreme, but send me my membership card.

dteowner said:

If you're content standing on a pile of crap that can't even hold up to a single prod without falling in on itself, you're welcome to it. I'm not sure how your choice to be foolish somehow defines me as extreme, but send me my membership card.

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Ok, let's try this.

Do you think people should be able to buy guns, yes or no ?
If no, then there is no discussion.
If yes, do you believe there should be any gun control, yes or no ?

If no, then 12 year old kids, should be allowed to buy guns, right ? Also, people with violent tendencies could too.

If yes, why ? There is no point in it according to your statements, they don't stop criminals, they don't serve as deterrents. People should have the right to defend themselves. People should be able to school their own children how they want (re 12 year old kid with gun).

Don't you see that your simplified viewpoints do not help anything. Things aren't clear cut.

Also, I do know that you haven't said all of these things, but it is how such a simplified outlook can lead to things like this.

If all is yes or no, you get into binds like this.

You seem to think I'm advocating for all guns to be burned. I'm not. I am not thinking like you, that it's either/or. I'm thinking in the middle.