Date sent: Thu, 27 May 1999 06:30:53 -0700 (PDT) From: mark@unicorn.com To: extropians@extropy.com Subject: Re: Guns [was Re: property Rights] Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> Steve Tucker [stevet@megsinet.net] wrote:
> >I think we can safely assume that we all share a desire to see the
> >overall level of violence decrease, whether in the schools or in society at
> >large.
>
> I strongly disagree; if Joe was interested in reducing the level of violence,
> then he would listen to what we have to say, rather than insulting us and
> calling for banning gun ownership when it's been well-proven not to reduce
> violence. If it did, assaults wouldn't be twice as common in Britain as in
> America, for example.
>
Then compare homicides per capita (oh, that's right, that figure is
unfavorable to your position, so you refuse to consider it).
>
> There's also a question as to how you measure 'violence'. European countries,
> for example, love to claim that they're less violent than America, yet tens
> of millions of Europeans have been killed in wars this century. Which is
> really more violent?
>
That happened after some european nations built, deployed and
used massive armaments (just in case you forgot).
>
> >(1) If there existed a
> >preponderance of evidence showing that violence does in fact _decrease_ when
> >guns are readily available, would the anti-gun forces actually change their
> >stripes?
>
> No. There is, and they don't care. I saw a wonderful TV show a few months
> ago supposedly debating whether handguns should be banned in Britain. On
> the one side were the reasonable, rational gun owners calmly pointing out
> the irrationality of the disarmers' position, then the presenter himself
> stated quite categorically that they didn't care, they wanted to ban guns,
> and ban them they were going to do. Wish I'd taped it, as it was the best
> example of disarmers' utter hysterical irrationality I've ever seen, at
> least before Joe began posting here.
>
To the asinine unwilling or unable to employ consistent logical
criteria, every excuse made by their side will be seen as a solid
reason, while every good reason proferred by the other side will be
dismissed as an excuse, as the Funky Unicorn perpetually proves
by his misjudgments, malpronouncements, and outright lies.
>
> Mark
>