Debate about Gun Control

[pbrower2a]

(07-11-2016, 02:48 AM)Galen Wrote:

(07-10-2016, 11:55 PM)Eric the (insult redacted) Wrote:

(07-10-2016, 11:42 PM)Galen Wrote:

(07-10-2016, 04:42 PM)Eric the (insult redacted) Wrote:

(07-09-2016, 06:32 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Some of that is just argument about the definition of a word.  Do you want the government to prohibit stuff?  If so, you can reasonably be said to favor a prohibition.  Check your dictionary.  I'm using a common definition.

The other part is fact.  Did alcohol prohibition work well in the 1930s?  How has the war on drugs been doing?  How well have recent attempts to keep bad guys from getting weapons worked?

Putting laws on the books is one thing.  Enforcing them is another.

It's not about the definition; that can't be disputed. You can't say that alcohol prohibition has ended, and then say gun control is prohibition. Not and still be in accord with reality. Drinking is NOT allowed for everyone and under all conditions. To think so is not to be concerned with facts. So the argument that prohibition does not work is a pure straw man, and does not deserve consideration in this debate.

The end game as you have made abundantly clear is in fact prohibition.

As I have made clear, only when and if the people want it, by a large enough majority that there won't be gun lovers crying "from my cold, dead hands!"

Not likely in my lifetime or yours. And my ideas are irrelevant; the gun control activists include gun owners like Gabby Giffords. Prohibition is not their proposal.

Don't give me that shit.  Everybody with a working brain knows that you would impose a gun ban if you could get away with it.  Truth is, the whole gun control movement is attempt to get a ban on the installment plan.  When you read their own material they make that pretty clear.

1. It is a test of citizenship that we obey laws that seem absurd, difficult, or frustrating, and even personally unjust. If we have a democratic process we have the right to seek legal change in statutory law. Only when those laws compromise a basic right do such laws merit civil disobedience, devious evasion, or even violent resistance depending upon the nastiness of the system.  

2. Most of us have some qualms about taking firearms away from people with legitimate uses. Law enforcement is obvious enough: this isn't England, where most of the police are unarmed. Sport hunters and sport target-shooters are the most defensible users of firearms.

Defense of a household? I suggest what may be the nastiest of all predatory animals, something with sharp claws and teeth, a horrible bite force, keen senses, extreme potential for aggression, intelligence, cunning, power, strength, speed, agility, and voracity. It knows our behavior as well as any other large predator except ourselves. Did I just defame your beloved dog? All that keeps a dog from being a man-eater (dogs are unfussy enough as eating machines that they would eat human flesh if it were offered to the dog) is its good behavior. Its affection or your caution prevents it from doing a full Big Cat or bear attack upon you. Threaten the dog's territory or anything for which the dog has affection, and it might as well be a bear or a Big Cat if one allows for size. Even a Yorkie can cause the level of flesh damage that poorly-placed gunshots can do. Self-extrication from a dog attack is exceedingly difficult; pound-for-pound, the dog is the most powerful and strongest mammal, and a dog a third your size will win the struggle.

Dogs rarely attack the wrong person during a threat, and they can often force changes in the behavior of a human threat. Dogs have keener night vision than you do and sleep less soundly than you do. To a burglar (and many burglars are rapists) the bark of a dog might as well be the roar of a leopard, and canine aggression is an instinctive (and wise) fear. All that the dog needs is affection for you, and you are safe; an intruder or stalker might find himself facing a bear or The Other Big Cat. A man's home is his castle and his dog's jungle; a dog is as savage in his defense of his 'jungle' as a Bengal tiger in the Sundarbans.

But heck, even a house cat has the potential to do great bodily harm to a threat to someone threatening a loved one. A mini-leopard jumping onto someone's head can maul one badly. I have seen a news report of such an incident; the victim was a burglar.

3. People who live where guns might be necessary for survival should have guns unless they are reasonably barred from having them. I know of some very liberal people who live in bear country. They have guns. If I lived in bear country, then I too would have a firearm. Bears are similar to dogs except for being much less social (dogs are really wolves, and a wolf pack and a human family have similar structure, which explains why dogs fit well into human families)

4. We have elections that can stop us liberals if we go down the slippery slope from banning guns and levels of ammunition suited only for criminal (including terrorist) use to favorite weapons of hunters and target shooters. I am satisfied with the idea that a hunting license is a gun license. Gun ownership is rightly a privilege.