(no subject)
Feb. 17th, 2018 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scarfmanI composed this as a Facebook comment just after Las Vegas and printed it here too. I think it bears repeating each time it’s topical.
I keep saying “it’s proven that the killing can be stopped” and you keep saying, “but we have rights” as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.
They’re for preventing people getting killed!
You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.
I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.
You think your postion is “rights are important” but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is “this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right”. You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to “lives are less important than guns” but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.
Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.
The question before us is, “Lives or guns?”, and you keep answering, “Guns.”
By the way, the response to this from the Facebook friend on whose post I was commenting was all like, “You called me a racist! How dare you!”
I keep saying “it’s proven that the killing can be stopped” and you keep saying, “but we have rights” as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.
They’re for preventing people getting killed!
You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.
I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.
You think your postion is “rights are important” but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is “this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right”. You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to “lives are less important than guns” but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.
Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.
The question before us is, “Lives or guns?”, and you keep answering, “Guns.”
By the way, the response to this from the Facebook friend on whose post I was commenting was all like, “You called me a racist! How dare you!”
no subject
Date: 2018-02-18 04:33 pm (UTC)You're lumping a lot of things together in one short monologue. You also get a number of things wrong, historically and/or factually. I once had someone tell me that "under no definition" was I a member of the militia. I got his dictionary off his shelf, opened it to "Militia" and he and I were both covered under the first definition. Basically, the meaning intended in the Second Amendment - as evidenced by diary entries and minutes of discussions - is "every legally responsible adult." Even those who objected to the Second Amendment during the creation of the Bill of Rights did so with the understanding than an individual right was being discussed. We have greatly expanded the definition of "legally responsible adult" since, but the concept remains valid. Every citizen is expected to support the nation in the ways they are capable of doing so.
As for the argument that advances in technology have invalidated the Second Amendment, that's like saying that the First Amendment does not apply to e-mail and cell phones. What is significant is the action, not the method. Under reasonable laws, personal responsibility must be assumed as much as personal innocence, or else we're headed for a totalitarian state. Once one of those is legally proven to be absent, then the law may act.
I would like to point out that school shootings in the US peaked in the Nineties. Several of the "school shootings" mentioned in recent press accounts were accidents with no malice involved. (There's your absence of personal responsibility.) One actually involved a police officer.
There's definitely still much room for improvement. As I have mentioned elsewhere, we need to pay more attention to each other, and law enforcement officers need to do their jobs. The FBI has admitted dropping the ball with the young man involved in the most recent shooting.
I would also like to mention another distortion too many people either make deliberately or simply because they don't bother to check the details. The Federal Department of Justice reports something like 32,000 homicides a year. Not all homicides are murder, or even manslaughter. Not all involve guns. From the same source, something like 40% of all homicides in the US are ruled legally justified. Due to defense of self or defense of another. In other words, the person killed was such an immediate and obvious threat that if they hadn't been stopped someone would likely have been murdered. Possibly several someones.
If you have a moral belief that the willful taking of any human life, regardless of circumstances, is wrong, I can respect that. However, it is not illegal.
Yes. A good person with a gun can stop a bad person with a gun. A few years ago there was an event covered in local and area papers and on radio and TV. A young man known to be troubled was seen walking across the campus of a southeastern Kentucky community college, carrying a gun. One of the teachers grabbed his own gun out of his car, got the drop on the man from cover, made him put the gun down and wait for the police. Nobody hurt. Strange how that wasn't mentioned on the national news...
Each mass shooting is different. Each must be handled differently. That is hard. However, if the effort saves one life - as likely happened in the example above - the effort is worthwhile. People - especially law enforcement - must be trained to be flexible.
Finally, yes, people are alike all over. Those who think school shootings only occur in the US are instructed to look up the one in Dunblane Scotland, in 1996:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
I hope I did not come off too strongly with this. I, too, am upset at these deaths. We should be better than this. I just disagree with the measures many are proposing. History shows us that prohibition does not work.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-19 07:11 pm (UTC)But the capper is where you cite statistics and say, "Well, actually the death rate isn't as bad as people say and anyway it's getting better," which constitutes answering, "Lives or guns?", with, "Guns." You outrage me.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-19 08:09 pm (UTC)How many such shootings were there _before_ the laws already in place were passed? That's what you need to compare with.
My argument is that "Lives or guns" is a false dichotomy. At a time when we have more guns in private hands in the US than ever before we are heading for a record low violent crime rate. It's not the guns.
You disappoint me.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-20 01:26 pm (UTC)The topic is mass shootings. National mass shootings stop when national gun control law is implemented. This is historical, proven fact, been going on for decades. That a specific proven solution for a specific problem fails to solve all problems is not a reason to forego solving the specific problem but that's what you're insisting. It's not reasonable to demand one solution solve all problems. It is proven that lack of national gun control enables loss of citizens' lives in mass shootings and is the primary or even sole factor that does, because implementing national gun control has been shown every time to stop the loss of citizen's lives from mass shootings in the whole nation. Stop it entirely. Every time. Mass shootings do not happen any more. They are stopped. This is known.
"Lives or guns" is not a false dichotomy in the case of mass shootings. Your argument appears to be (to the degree that you were arguing the same topic in the first place, which is something significantly less than 100%) that there is no causation, or even correlation, between implementation of national gun control and preventions of loss of life in mass shootings in a nation. This is not true.