I chose not to pander to your strawman argument. There is no such thing as a gun-free environment. There never has been since the invention of the firearm, and there never will be. Therefore your argument is pointless sophistry, which I chose to point out. You refuse to recognize the fact that your utopian ideal is an impossibility in any society on earth and that therefore your claims about the difference in consequences are specious and irrelevant.Brian Peacock wrote:That's a good point. Seth instantly ramped my initial two-line response to the level of an unjust demand that he should be rendered defenceless in the face of potentially overwhelming and lethal violence, throwing in for good measure insinuations that this was because I was irrationally and illogically fearful and/or paranoid about what he might do me with his personal firearms (as well as denigrating my character and motivation in his usual manner of course). But in fact all I did was raise ideas about the difference in consequences (for society and for individuals) between a gun and a no-gun environment, which I maintained even as Seth continued to present my point as being about the consequences for vulnerable, defenceless, gunless people faced with the threat of gun-totting criminals etc.JimC wrote:Seth keeps saying that anybody that opposes his views on guns wants to "ban guns". That is a loose and absurd contention. For a start, one needs to be very clear whether one is talking about the US, or one's own country.
In Oz, guns are not "banned", we simply have more stringent restrictions on ownership than the US, particularly in terms of hand guns, which is our choice, and our right. However, there is a very healthy community of hunting and shooting enthusiasts, which included myself in my younger days. The key point is that the vast majority of Australians are comfortable with the level of gun control that exist here - there is not a widespread movement like the NRA demanding change...
As for the US, most of us have stated that, in the long run, of course it is up to US voters to sort out the level of gun control that is acceptable. To me, it seems very unlikely that change is a realistic option; fair enough, as long as you are prepared to accept the consequences of a level of gun violence much, much higher than comparable developed nations. Of course, if you are comfortable being statistically compared to third world shitholes, then again, fair enough...
Yes, if all firearms instantly vanished from the face of the earth there would be fewer gun-involved crimes committed. But this cannot happen. Furthermore, even if it did miraculously happen (an interesting series of sci-fi books by S.M. Sterling, The Emberverse series of The Change series, explores this) the absence of guns would not necessarily reduce the amount of criminal victimization nor would it justify disarming innocents.
You want to studiously ignore these facts by trying to artificially constrain the debate only to your pet theory. I'm not about to let you get away with that sort of mendacity.
Yes, they are. Not all of them, but you can't own an "assault weapon" or a semi-automatic shotgun, therefore they are banned.Guns are not banned in the UK either,
but their use is very strictly regulated such that even private ownership for legitimate sporting or agricultural purposes requires accepting the restrictive conditions which effectively places one under the permanent scrutiny of the authorities.
And renders them utterly ineffective and unusable for personal defense, by design and intent.
I'm sure that's of great comfort to those who are shot dead by criminals because they were disarmed by their government...and their families.This does not mean guns are not used by criminals in the pursuance of their criminal activities or in random acts but it does mean there are few guns in circulation and that the impromptu use of guns is almost entirely averted along with the incidences of mass shooting.
In the US the imposition of a blanket 'ban' on personal firearms would not do away with its particular gun-related problems at a stroke, it would be naive to think it would, and for Seth to present this as among my contentions is, frankly, disingenuous.
It wouldn't do away with gun crime at all because criminals don't obey gun bans. Duh!
I offered one justification why nobody having guns in society is better (for society and individuals) that everybody having free access to them, and it was clearly not the responsible gun-use of responsible gun-owners which I suggested had disproportionate and potentially fatal consequences for others but the unconsidered, emotive, ill-judged, reckless, downright dangerous, or wanton, etc, use of firearms by responsible and irresponsible gun-owners alike.
Your justification was based on false presumptions and data.
I didn't refuse to engage, I engaged the actual discussion, which was not, as you suggest, not about responsible gun use, it was quite clearly about ANY gun use at all. You did not qualify your inclusive statement about anger-related gun misuse potential in any way at all. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude, as I did, that you apply this paranoid fear of misuse to each and every civilian gun owner. That's tarring everyone with the same brush.That Seth miscast my point and refused to engage in the discussion on any terms other than those which he felt justified his own personal possession simply showed how an honest debate is almost impossible with him on this.
Your failure to qualify the applicability of your concerns about "unconsidered, emotive, ill-judged, reckless, downright dangerous, or wanton, etc, use of firearms by responsible and irresponsible gun-owners alike" demonstrates exactly what I said it demonstrates. You failed to note any circumstances at all under which "responsible" gun ownership would be acceptable and you stated quite clearly that in your opinion that "everyone" should be debarred the possession of firearms because of the (unquantified) risk of "unconsidered, emotive, ill-judged, reckless, downright dangerous, or wanton, etc, use of firearms... "
Thus, it is neither unreasonable or unresponsive to bring this evident sub-rosa agenda to the surface and throw it squarely in your face as a repudiation of your bald-faced attempt to manipulate the debate to your benefit.
For example....
Seth wrote:You have failed to demonstrate this assertion. You have also failed to explain how shooting someone is anything other than "direct physical contact."Brian Peacock wrote:What I am saying is that in circumstances where someone feels inclined, however transiently, to harm someone else they are demonstrably less likely to follow through on that where it involves making direct physical contact. This is not a difficult sentence to parse.
And debunking your addressing of the implications by revealing your deliberately mendacious parsing of words is perfectly appropriate.Demonstrating the point isn't a necessary condition for taking it at face value and addressing it's implications
Feel free to do so. I'd love to rebut them too.(although I could have offered the work of Foot and Jarvis Thompson on social ethics, McMahan on Just War Theory, or any number of studies on conflict and impromptu violence).
Of course I'm not going to take your claims at face value. To do so is to serve your purposes and not mine and to allow you entree to derivative arguments that I see coming from a long way off. I choose to forestall this evasive sort of rhetorical tactic in favor of cutting to the meat of the argument. It's perfectly clear to me that your derivative argument will run along the lines of "we should ban guns because if the attacker actually has to make physical contact with the victim he will be less likely to attack." That may or may not be true, but it's entirely irrelevant to the core issue, which is the right of the VICTIM to possess superior force with which to defend him or herself against any kind of attack, direct, remote or otherwise.That Seth flatly refused take this at face value or make any effort even to consider the implications of the gun vs no-gun comparison presented, and instead equivocated on what 'unarmed' or 'direct physical contact' should really mean--despite it being quite clear that the latter phrase was used to draw a distinction between confrontations that involved a person making physical contact with another vs harm caused remotely, 'at a distance', without touching, etc (again, it is tiresome that one should have to engage in this level of petty qualification simply in order to move the discussion forward)--only demonstrate that on this issue, like so many others, his discursive tactics are wholly shackled to asserting and maintaining the moral, rationality, and practical superiority of his own ideals without regard or reference to what anything anybody might actually be saying on any given matter.
You are trying to draw a false moral equivalence between an attack and self-defense and the tools used by the respective parties. We can agree that no one should be using any weapon to attack someone else out of anger or whatever unjustified motive applies, but this has absolutely no connection whatever to the right or propriety of the VICTIM to be armed for effective self-defense in the event of such an attack.
Your statements are not "mere disagreement." You make the claim that it is too dangerous for society for anyone to be armed because someone might use that weapon improperly due to anger or fear. That is clearly your claim. I have explained to you in detail why this is an irrational position to take, just as it would be irrational to say that it's too dangerous for anyone to drive a car because someone might use it improperly and hurt or kill someone.For the record I have no interest in somehow forcing Seth to capitulate and recant, why would one bother(?), but neither am I interested in engaging an interlocutor who willingly employs intellectual dishonesty to force this from others or who starts from the expressed presumption that mere disagreement or challenge is a de facto signifier of irrationality, illogicality, and/or a default deficit in moral reasoning.
You go on to concoct an argument to support this thesis that deliberately sets the preconditions in such a way as to render your argument valid no matter what. This is a classic example of begging the question. Of course in an "unarmed" society where guns do not exist the danger of someone using a gun under stress or anger would not occur. But this argument falsely presumes that there is such a thing as an "unarmed" society in which guns do not exist. If you want to play irrelevant hypothetical games, go ahead, but I'm not participating. The real world facts make your proposition false from the first statement. Your dogged adherence to this fictional and utopian "unarmed society" while refusing to recognize that it is pointless to discuss such a society because such a society does not, never has, and never will exist.
I choose therefore to reject your constraints and examine the root question rationally, in real world terms. I have provided factual evidence showing that the fear that you express has not come to pass in the US despite a huge jump in the number of people carrying concealed weapons, which you utterly ignore.
If you want to complain about me trying to drive you off-topic, go ahead, but what you really need to do is propose a topic and argument that is not vacuously irrelevant because it posits impossible utopian social conditions that exist nowhere in reality.
I call your argumentation intellectually dishonest because it clearly is an attempt to evade the actual issues that surround an armed citizenry.
Anybody here believe Seth's denial?
