> 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.
Hmm, perhaps I'm too charitable by nature; I'm still willing to posit that Joe would like to see the level of violence decrease. In all fairness, Joe seems to favor gun ownership in general, except for his personal list of classes of people he wouldn't trust with them (there's a whole other topic here....). Why he feels the need to hurl insults and profanity is beyond me, however. (Note to the unsure: doing so does *not* increase the credibility of your statements!)
The interesting thing for me is how, for some people, issues like this become religious, by which I mean a person will take a conclusion (however arrived at) and keep it safe from any evidence or reasoning that would tend to discredit it. This is the solution of the Catholic church officials to Galileo's evidence of non-Earth-centric planetary motion--refuse to see the evidence and cling to the conclusion.
Several times evidence and reasoning have been presented here that strongly suggest that legal concealed carry leads to a safer society. I have yet to see anyone offer evidence that counters this claim; I can only conclude this is because they can't. Yet they cling to a view that, according to the only available evidence, would actually increase the level of violence in society--the direct opposite of their stated preference. Whenever someone points out that their recommendations, however well-meaning, will surely result in increased death and destruction, the reaction typically is to try to silence the evidence (toasted Galileo?). A modern example is the threats of death and violence received by Dr. Lott after publishing his findings (made by people supposedly opposed to violence???). Perhaps someone with a grounding in psychology can explain the phenomenon; it leaves me puzzled.
> >(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.
>
> Mark
I'd be interested in seeing that also. My main point here, of course, is that only a fool would make a serious attempt to persuade someone who has rendered himself immune to education.