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Fucking Guns

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Comments

  • orfeo wrote: »
    Once more. Slowly.

    Your proposition is nothing more than "accidents can result in death".

    The fact that you've chosen a particular object to insert into your proposition is nothing more than a distraction as to the nature of the proposition. It fails to actually influence the truth or falsity of the proposition.

    I mean, this is as frustrating as hell to me because I'm thoroughly in favour of rigorous gun control. What I'm not in favour of is trying to support rigorous gun control with incomplete and shoddy arguments. You've done nothing at all to explain if/why gun accidents are more frequent and/or more likely to result in death as a means of distinguishing guns from other products, and when I tried to do this your response was "fucking stupid".

    You literally think the crux of the argument, the part that actually pertains specifically to gun accidents and distinguishes them from other accidents, is the part not worth mentioning.
    It doesn't need to be mentioned, it is inherent to the device. Guns are meant to kill.This is not a new thread and the supporting issues to the statement are not new to it either.
    Complaining that each and every post doesn't contain every single bit of possible information ignores how conversations about issues work. And you are basically calling everyone stupid.
    It is made even more ridiculous as none of that was what the brouhaha was about
    And not all deaths from the availability of guns are accidents, BTW. No guns means shootings like columbine would be more rare. They got their guns legally. Over 80% of mass shootings* have been with legally purchased weapons. And that doesn't include incidents with lower death rates or opportunity killing. It is more than accidents.

    Legal availability of guns means more innocent people will die from being shot.
    People making the argument for self-defence are not denying any of the lethality issues, those are inherent to the argument. That is why a gun is seen as a deterrent.
    .

    *4 or more dead in a public place
  • Twilight wrote: »
    My son and I have been watching Ken Burns's 16 hour documentary, "The West," (it's excellent). We just finished a section about the cowboys and how disruptive they were when they came into town after weeks on the trail. By 1870's most of the towns in the west had passed laws not allowing them to bring their guns into town. They knew guns didn't belong in town in the 1870's. In the old West.

    There's a theory that all Ken Burns miniseries exist within a single cohesive universe.
  • Hah! There's also the part in his latest one, "Country Music" where anti-Vietnam protests are mentioned. As long as Peter Coyote narrates this universe, it's okay with me.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    Ohher wrote: »
    Thing is, though, it all feeds the "redemptive violence" myth and Might Makes Right.
    True. But, at least it includes the sheriff/marshal instigating laws requiring people to hand their guns in while in town.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    And you are basically calling everyone stupid.
    No, that's your M.O.
    It is made even more ridiculous as none of that was what the brouhaha was about.
    The "brouhaha" came about because you went after Rossweisse in a fairly shitty way.

  • Ruth wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    And you are basically calling everyone stupid.
    No, that's your M.O.
    It is made even more ridiculous as none of that was what the brouhaha was about.
    The "brouhaha" came about because you went after Rossweisse in a fairly shitty way.
    i understand exactly why you guys went mental. Just clarifying the events with orfeo

  • Ruth wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    And you are basically calling everyone stupid.
    No, that's your M.O.
    actually, it isn’t.

  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    If in your universe it's "mental" to object to insults and attacks on a terminally-ill Shipmate, you might want to take your morality meter in for a rebuild.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    i understand exactly why you guys went mental.

    'Mental'. Apart from the obvious problematic language here, no, we didn't go 'mental'. You were a dick to Ross, and we said you should apologise.

    That is not 'mental'. That's base-level humanity.
  • Expecting LB to apologize is mental.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    US SHOOTINGS REPORT 1/20/20

    Statistics for 1/19/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): Four: Missouri, 1 dead, 15 injured; Texas (San Antone) 2 dead, 5 injured; Texas (South Houston) 2 dead, 2 injured; Tennessee, 1 dead, 4 injured.
    Total deaths: 30
    Total injuries: 90
    Children under 12 killed: One; 10-y.o. Tennessee boy
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    i understand exactly why you guys went mental.

    'Mental'. Apart from the obvious problematic language here, no, we didn't go 'mental'. You were a dick to Ross, and we said you should apologise.

    That is not 'mental'. That's base-level humanity.
    The mental part was not your concern for Rossweisse, it was the denial of the logic of the argument.
    I did apologise for being less than sensitive. I do not apologise for the base contention, because it is correct.

  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    Twilight wrote: »
    Ohher wrote: »
    Thing is, though, it all feeds the "redemptive violence" myth and Might Makes Right.

    They did, and anytime a Quaker or other pacifist is encountered he's a silly little wimp who needs protection. Movies like, "Friendly Persuasion" always ended with the anti-gun person seeing the light.

    "Angel & The Bad Man" is just the opposite, Per IMDB:
    Quirt Evans, an all round bad guy, is nursed back to health and sought after by Penelope Worth, a Quaker girl. He eventually finds himself having to choose between his world and the world Penelope lives in.

    Penelope (Gail Russell) lives with her parents, and they take Quirt (John Wayne) into their home. They aren't "silly little wimps". They live their Quaker faith. The tough-minded sheriff respects them. He's very tough towards Quirt. OTOH, Quirt is totally out of his element.

    The whole thing is good vs. evil. The ending is good, and the sheriff has a great last line.


  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    If the post below is the, er, "apology" you reference above, I'm afraid we're still in epic fail territory. It's possible that your occasional lapses in--as mousethief puts it, "saying what you mean"-- is responsible.
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    (bolding mine)
    As for an apology; I do not apologise for positing the question, for the reasons I just wrote.
    However, if someone else had posted what she did, I would likely have tried to write it more gently than I did. So I do apologise for not being more gentle and considerate.

    What the bolded sentence, as written, actually says is this:

    "If someone else had posted what she ["she" presumably = Ross] did, I would likely have tried to write it ["it" presumably = the post which got you into difficulties] more gently than I did."

    In other words, because it was Ross (and not someone else) who posted what she did, then you felt no need to tread gently. On the contrary, apparently only posters other than Ross merit your consideration. That's your apology?

    We can all hope that's not what you meant, but it is what you wrote. Because your primary concern here seems to be issuing unassailable judgments rather than being present, honest, and compassionate, I find it hard to cut you slack (you don't cut much for others). Here's what would help me over this challenge: Try acknowledging when you get things wrong. Try apologizing for causing hurt or offense. Try using sufficient care in wording your posts so that they represent what you actually mean.
  • The CBC news has pictures of people dressed like soldiers and as heavily armed as assault troops swaggering through Virginia which sounds like a thoroughly dangerously polarized place. How much correlation of gun racists and the sides in their civil/slavery war? Are the south people more racist and gun? That's the impression given.
  • Ohher wrote: »
    US SHOOTINGS REPORT 1/20/20

    Statistics for 1/19/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): Four: Missouri, 1 dead, 15 injured; Texas (San Antone) 2 dead, 5 injured; Texas (South Houston) 2 dead, 2 injured; Tennessee, 1 dead, 4 injured.
    Total deaths: 30
    Total injuries: 90
    Children under 12 killed: One; 10-y.o. Tennessee boy
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

    In my opinion, this day is in "holy shit" territory.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    NP--

    That's certainly one common stereotype of Southerners. I don't know how accurate it is. There does seem to be *some* fact to it. But I'm from the Western US, rather than South (or North), and have no direct experience.

    I think there are lots of gun-rights people who aren't from the South, though.
  • Ohher wrote: »
    US SHOOTINGS REPORT 1/20/20

    Statistics for 1/19/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): Four: Missouri, 1 dead, 15 injured; Texas (San Antone) 2 dead, 5 injured; Texas (South Houston) 2 dead, 2 injured; Tennessee, 1 dead, 4 injured.
    Total deaths: 30
    Total injuries: 90
    Children under 12 killed: One; 10-y.o. Tennessee boy
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

    In my opinion, this day is in "holy shit" territory.

    I'm glad you highlighted this. I missed it in all the effing and jeffing.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    The CBC news has pictures of people dressed like soldiers and as heavily armed as assault troops swaggering through Virginia which sounds like a thoroughly dangerously polarized place. How much correlation of gun racists and the sides in their civil/slavery war? Are the south people more racist and gun? That's the impression given.

    I'm no expert here, but can offer the following observations: I live in a rural northern state very nearly devoid of any gun regulations, yet also with one of the lowest gun violence rates in the US. We tend not to have rallies like this; on the rare occasions when they occur, the're not heavily attended but do include some folks got up like those in these pictures.

    In my youth (bear in mind, that's several decades ago) I toured with a theatre group which took shows from city to city (e.g., Atlanta, Georgia [fairly cosmopolitan even back then], but also Broken Arrow, Oklahoma [Deliverance territory]) spending a month in each city the South and Southwest. I visited several cities several times each.

    I'm not sure to what extent Northerners grasp the intensity with which some (many? I dunno) Southerners hate, despite, resent, and revile the North (= city people = educated people = financially-better-off people), their conquerors, invaders, occupying forces. Here's a not uncommon experience we actors used to have even in larger, tourist-accustomed cities: the cast would climb into the company car and go out to a late-hours joint after the show for food and beer. We'd enter; the place would fall silent. We'd take seats and wait ages for menus. A waitress would eventually wander over. As soon as any one of us opened our mouths (wrong accents) the game was up. Whatever anybody ordered, they were out of it. "Well, what can we get?" would be countered with, "Well, Honey, thay-at depay-ends on whatch y'all want." "Can we get some coffee to go?" "Sorry, we're fresh outta coffee" (and this would be at a 24-hour truck stop).

    The Civil War and its immediate aftermath devastated the South. Relying on chattel slavery for the vast majority of work reduced the South's need / desire to develop other means of exploiting their natural resources. Why invent mechanical harvesters and combines when you're already heavily invested in feeding, clothing, housing, managing, imprisoning and breeding your human livestock? Indeed, how could you afford to? It would cut into the profits from all that unpaid labor.

    Even when innovations like the cotton gin were introduced, they made cotton plantations more productive, which meant even more "field hands"--slaves--were needed.

    To maintain this system, it was absolutely essential to instill--by force, if necessary--in everyone involved the unshakable belief that these human livestock occupied their debased condition by reason of their inferior intellect, judgment, and moral development.

    The North, by virtue of a very different geography and climate--long, cold winters, rocky lands, rugged hills--produced farms that were simply too small for the kinds of monoculture in cotton and tobacco possible in the South. Slavery existed in the North, but life itself was lived on a smaller scale there. A larger household might have one or two slaves, but was more apt to follow the old Puritan model of boarding a neighbor's teenage girl as household help.

    The romanticism of The Lost Cause fed on itself, alongside the myth of black inferiority, has gone on festering for a century and a half. And yes, the link between a commitment to guns and a commitment to brandishing the hardware needed to quell revolt by those one insists on oppressing is very real.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    Other, that’s a very interesting post, thank you.

    MMM
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    edited January 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Once more. Slowly.

    Your proposition is nothing more than "accidents can result in death".

    The fact that you've chosen a particular object to insert into your proposition is nothing more than a distraction as to the nature of the proposition. It fails to actually influence the truth or falsity of the proposition.

    I mean, this is as frustrating as hell to me because I'm thoroughly in favour of rigorous gun control. What I'm not in favour of is trying to support rigorous gun control with incomplete and shoddy arguments. You've done nothing at all to explain if/why gun accidents are more frequent and/or more likely to result in death as a means of distinguishing guns from other products, and when I tried to do this your response was "fucking stupid".

    You literally think the crux of the argument, the part that actually pertains specifically to gun accidents and distinguishes them from other accidents, is the part not worth mentioning.
    It doesn't need to be mentioned, it is inherent to the device.

    No. The capacity to kill as a result of an accident is not inherent to the device. And that is why, when you build an argument on that capacity to kill, you need to distinguish one device from another.

    You support private swimming pools? Then you support innocent children dying in pool accidents.

    Where's the flaw in my argument? Apart from the fact that I'm directing it towards a person whose capacity to listen is deeply impaired.
  • .... How much correlation of gun racists and the sides in their civil/slavery war? Are the south people more racist and gun? That's the impression given.

    There are historians who argue that the 2nd Amendment was specifically drafted and included in the Constitution for Southern slave owners who needed to maintain their armed patrols (the so-called "militia"). It had nothing to do with self-defense or insurrectionist theory - those are modern arguments created and disseminated to conceal the true intent of the 2A and promote gun sales.

  • Angel & The Bad Man" is just the opposite, Per IMDB:
    Thanks Golden Key. I watch a lot of TCM and have seen that title and never guessed it was actually something very different.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Once more. Slowly.

    Your proposition is nothing more than "accidents can result in death".

    The fact that you've chosen a particular object to insert into your proposition is nothing more than a distraction as to the nature of the proposition. It fails to actually influence the truth or falsity of the proposition.

    I mean, this is as frustrating as hell to me because I'm thoroughly in favour of rigorous gun control. What I'm not in favour of is trying to support rigorous gun control with incomplete and shoddy arguments. You've done nothing at all to explain if/why gun accidents are more frequent and/or more likely to result in death as a means of distinguishing guns from other products, and when I tried to do this your response was "fucking stupid".

    You literally think the crux of the argument, the part that actually pertains specifically to gun accidents and distinguishes them from other accidents, is the part not worth mentioning.
    It doesn't need to be mentioned, it is inherent to the device.

    No. The capacity to kill as a result of an accident is not inherent to the device. And that is why, when you build an argument on that capacity to kill, you need to distinguish one device from another.

    You support private swimming pools? Then you support innocent children dying in pool accidents.

    Where's the flaw in my argument? Apart from the fact that I'm directing it towards a person whose capacity to listen is deeply impaired.
    That is an hilarious claim from someone who ignores that accident is not the only way people die from legal guns. And the accident thing is stupid as well. There is almost nothing that cannot be a factor in an accidental death. The ratio of benefit/risk of a gun is lower than anything people use on a regular basis. To get lower, one needs to deal in explosives or poisons.
  • RooKRooK Shipmate
    Stumbled across this reprint of a 2018 article describing how gun violence is actually 5 problems, all with separate solutions.

    It's hard to ignore the common elements in all of them (guns, mostly wielded by men), but the particulars of the dynamics show how any one solution isn't necessarily going to address everything. Also the disproportional attention we tend to have to certain types of gun violence, perhaps with some unspoken collective feelings of acceptance or futility.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    US SHOOTINGS REPORT 1/21/20

    Statistics for 1/20/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): Four: Missouri, 1 dead, 15 injured; Texas (San Antone) 2 dead, 5 injured; Texas (South Houston) 2 dead, 2 injured; Tennessee, 1 dead, 4 injured.
    Total deaths: 38
    Total injuries: 75
    Children under 12 killed: One; 10-y.o. Tennessee boy
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    Ohher wrote: »
    US SHOOTINGS REPORT 1/21/20

    Statistics for 1/20/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): Four: Missouri, 1 dead, 15 injured; Texas (San Antone) 2 dead, 5 injured; Texas (South Houston) 2 dead, 2 injured; Tennessee, 1 dead, 4 injured.
    Total deaths: 38
    Total injuries: 75
    Children under 12 killed: One; 10-y.o. Tennessee boy
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

    CORRECTION

    Statistics for 1/20/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): 0
    Total deaths: 38
    Total injuries: 75
    Children under 12 killed: 0
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    edited January 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    That is an hilarious claim from someone who ignores that accident is not the only way people die from legal guns.

    For the last time, because after that I can't be arsed: YOU ARE THE PERSON who constructed an argument solely based on the capacity of guns to accidentally kill!

    YOU!

    YOU!

    YOU!

    YOU!

    YOU!

    Fuck me slowly with a chainsaw. My entire shtick has been deconstructing your completely ballsed-up argument and what's wrong with it. We haven't discussed what I think independently of your balls-up. Okay? You and your shonky effort set the whole parameters of this discussion, and the entire fucking point is that you ignored everything else about guns!!!

    You have an extraordinary gift for being both arrogant and an idiot at the same time. I mean, finally in the rest of that post you started reflecting what I've been trying to tell you for days, only you frame it as telling me something I don't know!

    If you had bothered to fucking read my posts instead of announcing you weren't bothering, you might not look like such a freaking moron right now.
  • There, there, Orfeo. We've all been there. In fact, we're there right now. Wanna biscuit and a nice cuppa tea?
  • TubbsTubbs Admin Emeritus
    edited January 2020
    There, there, Orfeo. We've all been there. In fact, we're there right now. Wanna biscuit and a nice cuppa tea?

    About the one good thing to come of this whole discussion is @orfeo 's masterful take-down. It really is a thing of beauty.

    I'm trying to understand the evolution / journey from thoughtful, considered poster to the totally blinkered, has have the last word and is always right one.
  • jbohnjbohn Shipmate
    @orfeo , old and honored debating partner - it's good to see you here, and in fine form!
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    That is an hilarious claim from someone who ignores that accident is not the only way people die from legal guns.

    For the last time, because after that I can't be arsed: YOU ARE THE PERSON who constructed an argument solely based on the capacity of guns to accidentally kill!
    For the last time, I did not make accidents the cornerstone of my argument.
    First post on this:
    The question isn’t whether a gun ever stopped something bad, but what is the overall effectiveness vs the dangers.
    Kinda feel that the danger significantly overshadows the benefit.
    For every scared burglar, how many dead family members?
    Not all those incidents are accidents.

    Second one, in response to Rossweisse
    Let me put my statement another way: Is your safety/life worth all the dead from gunshot children?
    Because that is the question.
    Not all those are accidents either.

    In a follow up post, I did say:
    If a person wants legal gun ownership, they own the accidental deaths
    In context it is hardly a "sole" argument and was soon followed by the broader:
    A consequence of legal gun ownership is innocent deaths
    My argument has never been only the accidental shootings. Only a restricted and restrictive reading comes to this conclusion.

    But, for the sake of argument, let's only consider accidental deaths. Guns are still in a special category because they are designed to kill and their proper use includes that threat.* It is the reason they exist. The same is not true of swimming pools and cars.

    *Especially in the self-protection argument which is what this is about.
  • ... And are you EVER going to fucking apologize to Ross? Like any decent human being would?
  • RooKRooK Shipmate
    [gag]
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    You know the answer to that. We all do.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    Perhaps lB might grace us long enough to explain her unwillingness to make apologies. Or corrections. Or sense.

    One thing at a time: lilBuddha, why not apologize to Ross? What's the hold-up, here? Is there something we can do to assist you?
  • "nudge theory" case 1 - the number of people who died in the UK as a result of suicide dropped dramatically in the 1970s. The reason is that coal gas was changed to natural gas. Individuals lost a quick and easy way to slowly poison themselves with some ease and irrevocably. Innocent people were nudged away from harmful action.

    "nudge theory" case 2 - remove the gun from the wardrobe and you remove the opportunity to kill innocent people and the out-of-control volume of gun murder would drop. Trouble is they are addicted to the narcotic whiff of the thing.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    But, for the sake of argument, let's only consider accidental deaths. Guns are still in a special category because they are designed to kill and their proper use includes that threat.* It is the reason they exist. The same is not true of swimming pools and cars.

    Yes, it's true that guns are designed as weapons, whereas cars and swimming pools are not. And yes, this puts them in a special category - it means you can't assume that deaths resulting from gun use are a product safety issue, whereas it's safe to make that assumption for cars and pools. Guns that kill people are, in general, functioning as designed and intended. Cars that kill people need a safety review.

    And yes, I think it means that they're also a special case for risk/reward type computations, in that you shouldn't count the deaths of "bad guys" as deaths for the purposes of such a computation, as the death of the "bad guy" is part of the intended use of the device.

    But if, as you suggest, we restrict ourselves to accidental deaths, it's not a special case. The negligence associated with leaving a loaded gun accessible to a toddler is the same as the negligence associated with leaving an unfenced swimming pool, bandsaw, or other potentially lethal device accessible to that same toddler, or leaving that toddler in a car on a hot day, or even not screwing your toddler's chest of drawers to the wall.
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    The CBC news has pictures of people dressed like soldiers and as heavily armed as assault troops swaggering through Virginia which sounds like a thoroughly dangerously polarized place. How much correlation of gun racists and the sides in their civil/slavery war? Are the south people more racist and gun? That's the impression given.
    I would like to clarify what happened in Richmond, Virginia on Monday. It has been described as a gun rally, but the participants saw it as a lobby day. In the weeks after a new legislature is sworn in, many groups of citizens come to the state house to emphasize their concerns about possible legislation. The legislature expects them and arrangements are made to make sure that each group has its own separate lobby day.

    The Virginia Citizens Defense League has attended lobby days for years , and no violence has ever occurred.

    The governor had received word that there might be violence, and he hastily had a chain-link fence thrown up and forbade guns inside the fence. The result was that the fenced-in area was fairly empty, and the area outside had about twenty thousand gun-toters who did not do anything with their weapons.

    One man urged people to jump over the fence and start shooting people. No one rose to the bait. Everybody, including the police, was relaxed and cheerful. There were very large numbers of black people. There was an
    Asian woman carrying a sign that said, DO I LOOK LIKE A WHITE SUPREMICIST?

    There was a serious threat of violence this year, but it came from people who intended to come to Virginia from out-of-state and cause spectacular trouble. Fortunately the FBI caught them in time.


  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    I used to moan about being limited to how many aspirin I could buy at one time. Then I discovered that suicide by aspirin had plummeted since the ban came in, simply because they weren't so easily available. I stopped moaning. (About that, anyway.)
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Rossweisse wrote: »
    @Doc Tor and @Ohher, I thank you. You have absolutely nailed the issue here. LilBuddha uses these boards to kick fellow Shipmates in the head at every opportunity, but she sure gives no clues about herself, and she is utterly dishonest in a variety of other ways.

    Got it in one.
    And fuck you with a rusty, red hot, ragged-edged, shit encrusted farm implement. I expect such from Rosweisse, but you should know better.
    Dishonest I am not; intentionally mean, rarely. There are many epithets and insults fairly sent my way, but those two are so much shit that even Heracles could not clear the piles.

    I'm working my way back through this thread, and haven't got to Ross being insulted yet, but this made my jaw drop. @lilbuddha you expect such from @Rossweisse? One of the most gracious, intelligent, funniest posters on the Ship, not to mention courageous too. Are you reading boards in a parallel universe?
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    I'm guessing this is it. @lilbuddha saying to @Rossweisse: "Let me put my statement another way: Is your safety/life worth all the dead from gunshot children?
    Because that is the question."

    For a start, it's a stupid question, as others have pointed out. Secondly, while I may sometimes respond robustly to some Shipmates, I try to make sure they can take it. (And when I get it wrong I hope I've always apologised.) Saying this to someone with advanced cancer is scary. Luckily I think Ross has more strength in her smallest, most cancer ridden bone than you seem to have in your entire body. At the moment I'm more worried about your condition than hers.
  • lilbuddha contra mundum*. Everybody else can see what she cannot, or vice versa.

    ______________
    *against the world. Famously said of Athanasius.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    And of Sebastian Flyte. And we all know what happened to him.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    US SHOOTINGS REPORT 1/22/20

    Statistics for 1/21/2020
    Total mass shootings (4 or more casualties): 0
    Total deaths: 29
    Total injuries: 42
    Children under 12 killed: 0
    Info courtesy of Gun Violence Archive.org.
    Any errors mine.

    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    IIRC, from the "Brideshead Revisited" TV series, Sebastian (after a messed up, wastrel, degraded sort of life*) wound up in the care of a Catholic charity, and died at peace.

    *From the POV of the series. Don't remember details. But wasn't there something about his being gay/bi? And maybe acting inappropriately?
  • ... And are you EVER going to fucking apologize to Ross? Like any decent human being would?
    I did apologise, I apologised for not being considerate, but people are asking me to apologise for something that I do not think is wrong. Namely for stating that we are responsible for the consequences of the laws we support. It mightn't be nice, but it is still true.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    lilbuddha contra mundum*. Everybody else can see what she cannot, or vice versa.

    ______________
    *against the world. Famously said of Athanasius.
    Rook agreed with my point. Because he saw through the personal to the logic of the argument.
    I'm pretty sure he likes me no more than you do, but he did not let that interfere with his mental processes.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    But if, as you suggest, we restrict ourselves to accidental deaths, it's not a special case. The negligence associated with leaving a loaded gun accessible to a toddler is the same as the negligence associated with leaving an unfenced swimming pool, bandsaw, or other potentially lethal device accessible to that same toddler, or leaving that toddler in a car on a hot day, or even not screwing your toddler's chest of drawers to the wall.
    Again, I disagree. The purpose of a gun makes for no safe situation without making the thing impracticable for its intended purpose. The same is not true of a car or a pool.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    ... And are you EVER going to fucking apologize to Ross? Like any decent human being would?
    I did apologise, I apologised for not being considerate, but people are asking me to apologise for something that I do not think is wrong. Namely for stating that we are responsible for the consequences of the laws we support. It mightn't be nice, but it is still true.

    No. You didn't. As explained here:
    Ohher wrote: »
    If the post below is the, er, "apology" you reference above, I'm afraid we're still in epic fail territory. It's possible that your occasional lapses in--as mousethief puts it, "saying what you mean"-- is responsible.
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    (bolding mine)
    As for an apology; I do not apologise for positing the question, for the reasons I just wrote.
    However, if someone else had posted what she did, I would likely have tried to write it more gently than I did. So I do apologise for not being more gentle and considerate.

    What the bolded sentence, as written, actually says is this:

    "If someone else had posted what she ["she" presumably = Ross] did, I would likely have tried to write it ["it" presumably = the post which got you into difficulties] more gently than I did."

    In other words, because it was Ross (and not someone else) who posted what she did, then you felt no need to tread gently. On the contrary, apparently only posters other than Ross merit your consideration. That's your apology?

    We can all hope that's not what you meant, but it is what you wrote. Because your primary concern here seems to be issuing unassailable judgments rather than being present, honest, and compassionate, I find it hard to cut you slack (you don't cut much for others). Here's what would help me over this challenge: Try acknowledging when you get things wrong. Try apologizing for causing hurt or offense. Try using sufficient care in wording your posts so that they represent what you actually mean.

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