Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[pbrower2a]

(05-28-2018, 08:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-24-2018, 11:48 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Gun control works; that is clear from any perusal of the facts. As has been well publicized, the assault weapons "prohibition" reduced mass shootings by 37%. I never understood why it wasn't a permanent ban. But when it ended, mass shootings went up 200%. Stats have been posted here and elsewhere for a long time that prove my "facts." Just like climate science deniers, gun advocates refuse to look at facts. It is clear that, just as you call it, you have a "values lock" on this issue. As the students point out, you and other gun advocates are not addressing the real cause of the problem: the easy availability and increased technological danger of guns and the refusal of lawmakers to act, partly due to the power of a criminal organization. This is not absurd, but the real fact that any criminal or gang member in the USA can get one by fair means or foul, because there are so many around even in blue states, and so many red states right next door. Bob prefers to ignore this fact and claim that it is I that is ignoring facts.

I'd like to say a little about values lock.  There was a time when lead additives were common in gasoline and the environment, and these happen to be violent times.  Some have said lead is a mind altering pollutant that contributed to the violence.  The blue mind pattern credits the assault weapons ban on the reduction in violence.  The red credit the concealed carry laws which were becoming common at the time.

I remember seeing someone deny the strong (and with a high likelihood of causality) link between lead in the system and violent crime. I could see the pattern on the map:  that where the bottlenecks for automobile-based commuters concentrated the highest levels of emissions, crime rates were highest. Traffic intensified and slowed as it approached the bottlenecks approaching downtown areas, and so did lead emissions.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, eastern side, violent crime rates intensified from Fremont to Union City to Hayward to San Lorenzo to San Leandro to Oakland, and bad as Oakland was, southern Oakland wasn't quite as bad as the areas just south of downtown. Sure, poverty played its insidious role... but lead could be connected both to cognitive deterioration and loss of impulse control -- both strongly linked to criminality. The same pattern applied to every big city. As leaded fuel began to disappear from vehicle use as cars without catalytic converters disappeared from the vehicle mix, violent crime fell about ten years later. Lead is a cumulative poison.

The denier claimed that it was irreligion (news for him -- poverty and religion correlate strongly), character, and genetic predisposition. Poverty is as severe in America as it has ever been; religious faith is weakening; there is no evidence of any 'genetic improvement (probably a racist matter, but he denied that -- what a surprise!). But the peak years for cohorts of violent crime remain the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Quote:Values Lock in part reflects an understanding of how the world works.  Is there a inhibition against violence which was reduced by lead additives?  Does prohibition work?  Is it best that the good guys are better armed, trained and ready to deal with violence than the bad guys?  The weapons issue is complex.  I just chose three of many issues which are involved.  The common use of drugs potentially effecting active shooters is another.

Few people call for a return to the use of leaded motor fuels. A technological fix for carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides took out a pollutant even more insidious in low concentrations.

I have my idea of an excellent deterrent to crime, one that can detect a bad guy from telltale behavior long before a person knows about the potential mugger, burglar, or rapist... and is just short of the lethality of cougars and black bears similar in size. It has keen senses that do not shut down at night as human senses do. Unlike a firearm, it is more likely to thwart than facilitate a suicide.



That is a good reason for behaving oneself. You never know where one of these is.

Quote:I for one think attention deficit order is a disease, might blame the disease rather than the attempted cure, but would not dismiss the problem out of hand.  People are different.  Not everyone thrives in the particular environment of the schools.  Bullies following the main line are apt to handle roughly many that are ill suited for that environment.  I was a victim of the bullies.  I would try to find their victims another place, and am dubious about drugging them into pseudo compliance with a demanding society.  I would also have the school adults inhibit more actively the bullies, whose intent is often to harm others.

ADD is real, and it can make much in life extremely frustrating. I would rather have Asperger's (which allows me to do things that must be savored) than ADD which makes on impatient.

Quote:And this perspective should not go away just because it aligns with others.  Because one way of looking at a problem might be considered valid by some, it does not necessarily disqualify others.  Active shooters are a problem.  Prohibition is not the only and obviously correct solution.

We need people who can think outside the box, but those who think outside the box need exercise some judgment on whether their proposals are valid and workable. In my observation, genius is doing something that first seems obviously wrong or absurd and after working it out can convince others of how obvious and applicable the once-crazy idea is. Stupidity or insanity is doing something that is well known to be wrong and absurd, getting bad results, and not recognizing that the results are bad that one sticks with it as if it were wise. The first is J.S. Bach,   Albert Einstein, or Joan Miro. The second? I shall avoid naming names.
 

Quote:That is what I mean be values lock, an obsession on one perspective that leads to an automatic rejection of others.  It reflects alignment with one perspective so tight that it renders one incapable of accepting others.

But recognizing that values lock exist (unless on one's own side) exists is itself a rejection of the idea. Of course, I can lock out homophobia and child sexual abuse at the same time; I consider myself adept enough at testing arguments for their semblance or lack thereof of truth (don't try to convince me that young-earth creationism,  vaccinations cause autism, a flat or hollow Earth, or Holocaust denial is valid).

Two and two is not five, Germany is not to the southwest of France, pi and e are both transcendental (not rational or algebraic), and Alfred Hitchcock did not direct any episode of Star Wars.