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Ending Gun Violence: Common Sense versus Magic

Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 2 months ago to Government
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"What passes for thinking about the prevention of gun violence is not thinking at all. Thinking (as problem-solving) is a search for means that can be reasonably expected to achieve a given end. By reasonably I mean that supporting arguments can be provided to demonstrate to the satisfaction of reasonable people the connection between the means and ends. What we get from gun-control advocates is nothing like that; instead they operate on the magical belief that uttering certain words — codifying just the right incantation — will accomplish the end."
SOURCE URL: https://sheldon.liberty.me/ending-gun-violence-common-sense-versus-magic


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  • Posted by starznbarz 9 years, 2 months ago
    You solve gun violence with gun violence. We rarely hear about the vast majority of good folk stopping, or killing bad folk in a Constitutional and moral fashion. There is a reason we don`t hear about many things that prove the lies, the media is busy under the presidents table applying cover for his agenda.
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  • Posted by Esceptico 9 years, 2 months ago
    Even (for the sake of discussion) if you grant the anti-protect-yourself-from-criminals group their desire, i.e., outlaw guns, it won’t work. The government can’t keep drugs out of prisons, so exactly how (I ask those folks) are you going to keep guns off the street? I usually get a blank look in return.
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    • Posted by RevJay4 9 years, 2 months ago
      Excellent point, Esceptico. New ammo for me in discussion with the gun control freaks I run into. It is clearer than attempting to cite the stats which seem to go over the left's heads.
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 9 years, 2 months ago
    Nobody ever seems to understand that the one common factor in all these mass shootings is the locations status as a "gun free zone" They should be called "Shooter safe, target rich environments". The second factor in every case where we have medical records available, is that the perpetrator has been on Ritalin as a child. There is a reason that the US Military will not take you as a recruit, if you have been on one of these drugs.
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    • Posted by Flootus5 9 years, 2 months ago
      And an anecdote from history. On August 21, 1863, Quantrill's Raiders laid waste to Lawrence, Kansas. They killed over 180 people, mostly men, and burned the town to the ground.

      Their rampage was made all the more easy by the fact that the mayor - Boston born George Washington Collamore - had required all citizens firearms be locked up in an armory. He had made Lawrence a "gun-free" zone. It did not remain gun free for long.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 2 months ago
    The progressives with a gun control, strike that, people control agenda, keep talking about "Common Sense," while totally lacking any of it themselves. Common Sense for them is like a Forbidden Fruit that they see on the horizon...
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 9 years, 2 months ago
    The same old disregard, or actual hatred, of justice.
    Wanting to strip people of their means of self-de-
    fense, and daring to label such stripping as "com-
    mon sense", is not something we should allow to
    go unchallenged. It is an actual insult.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 9 years, 2 months ago
    Progressives don't like it when you inject reality into the discussion of any of their Utopian fantasies. I try to remind my more liberal friends that a serious effort to institute European-style gun control would make Trump's proposal to evict all of the 11 million illegals look like a walk in the park. Making it harder to acquire new guns is almost irrelevant, given we have over 300 million weapons in circulation, among over 80 million gun owners, with billions of rounds of ammunition in private hands.

    To make new gun laws meaningful, the law enforcement community would have to expand enormously. More street cops would have to patrol high crime areas, which already complain that they're "overpoliced" as is. New cyber units would have to be more aggressive and invasive of personal privacy to prevent the growth of a robust black market.

    Liberals don't like the idea of a police state, but they also don't want to admit that it's exactly what they're asking for with increasing the basis of criminal behavior in so many areas. Franco's Spain was a peaceful society, with a Guardia Civil patrolman armed with a submachine gun on every corner.
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    • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 2 months ago
      The anti-gunners have been going on and on about having 300M or more firearms in the US. They like to imply that equates to a gun in nearly every home, which is not true. All in an effort to create enough distortion of facts to keep advancing their anti-gun agenda.

      It works for them because the liberal media helps them lie, especially by only reporting negatives on the issue. The Uber driver being a case in point. He stopped a mass shooting with his concealed carry weapon, but that was not the focus of the coverage.

      Every mass shooting, they lovingly cover how many guns the shooter, or his parents if that is who owns the guns, has. This recent incident and Sandy Hook were both cases of the parents having multiple weapons and the "kids" had access. Yet they always blame the inanimate firearm, not the irresponsible adults. I put kids in quotes in the previous sentence, since while the media kept referring to them as kids, they were both legal adults.

      The problem is never the guns, it is always the people involved.

      Neither I, my wife, nor the kids, have ever been involved in a shooting. Whether singular or a mass shooting. Of course were are responsible people with no severe mental issues. Other than the not being liberal one. I am sure they would love to make that an offense in and of itself.

      Funny how that works, if you are not screwed up, you do not do screwed up things.
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  • Posted by Slytherin 9 years, 2 months ago
    I think personal responsibility comes into play. Ayn rand believed that a individual does not have the right to initiate force on another. If we are born an individual, that includes everyone who uses force. There are punishments for those who intiate force. Carrying out punishments follows. These are high enough to teach respect for weapons.

    My point is that this is simple at the idea level. It isn't when we implement it because we have something called emotions.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 9 years, 2 months ago
    This is an issue that needs to be analyzed thoroughly by everyone capable of rational, human thought. Solve this fairly, straightforward issue, then apply the basis of the solution to all of our current problems that we are only worsening by regulation.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 2 months ago
    The problem entirely lies in that people continue to associate laws with the idea of proactive measures. They are not. Laws are entirely reactive measures that proscribe a punishment for carrying out some specific behavior or course of action, which must then be proven in court. It is impossible to prevent violence of any kind by outside force of will while allowing the retention of will itself. Will may only be controlled internally by one's own volition.

    Laws simply attempt to affix a punishment to an action sufficiently harsh that it dissuades the common man from evaluating such an alternative in a favorable light. The problem with this is twofold: first, that many current punishments for violence are unpersuasive: many current occupants of our prison system don't view incarceration as that big of a punishment in comparison to taking a life. It should be noted that as the death penalty has been reduced in use, the violent crimes which once warranted such measures have risen correspondingly. This is no coincidence.

    The second problem is that the general populace who generally obey the laws have been systematically deprived of their rights to self-defense in the face of these crimes. The lawmakers have at once toned down the penalties for criminal behavior on the part of the criminals, and turned up the penalties on law-abiding citizens! What a perverse state of affairs!
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  • Posted by Eyecu2 9 years, 2 months ago
    If you want and end to gun violence the solution is very simple. Make certain that good people are well armed and trained in the use of guns and prosecute to the fullest anyone who commits a crime with a gun.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 9 years, 2 months ago
    This is what we are up against...people (if we can call them that) that are brain only, no mind nor subconscious., compartmentalized in their mindlessness and suck in somewhere between the terrible twos and the ever so popular; mystical magical stage of awareness or we might say: awarelessness. If you have a child, you understand these levels or memes, we all go through it; but these creatures have never left it, they have 'Chosen' to stay. You know yourself, when your child is not aware, everything that happens is the fault of something else and accountability never enters their conversations nor thinklessing.

    Read: Spiral Dynamics by Ken Wilbur
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  • Posted by livefree-NH 9 years, 2 months ago
    Gun controllers make claims that are indeed not science-based. We certainly have legislators as well as armchair experts who enforce this requirement for laws about the environment, economics, and even prescription drugs. Why not here?
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    • Posted by 9 years, 2 months ago
      Unfortunately the experts are politically chosen based on their suppport for banning guns.
      The people who really understand this from personal experience are 60 and older, and most of them don't know how the first federal gun law was irrationally allowed to stand by the supreme court. That one judgement should be overturned and all the gun laws that followed it would be recognized as invalid and unconstitutional. No one in government has authority to redefine "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
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