4187

Ah so you complain about other people’s inablility to see another perspective but when people offer their opinion you state it’s based off their “life experience” and dismiss them in a condescending way.

4188

Excellent. We’ve established two polar extremes where gun use would be unnecessary or hopeless – shooting a snooper who never enters your home, and engaging in a firefight with a biker gang willing to sustain casualties to do no more than steal guns. (Yes, this is amusing to imagine in today’s society.)

I’d argue this is still insufficient to create a generalization via inductive reasoning.

4189

I’m sorry, that’s still not it.

Are you referring to our discussion in the Identity Politics thread? If you recall, you asked rhetorically, “what purpose would it serve to do X?” (This was followed by the P&R special – a strawman example designed to ridicule.)

To me, if you rearrange and paraphrase that statement, you were effectively saying “there is NO purpose to doing X.” That’s a generalization that can be disproved by merely thinking of a single example where there IS a purpose to doing X. Again, just to me personally, it seems pointless to make a statement that is so easy to disprove. It’s a little bit maddening.

Anyway, what has surprised me this week is the widespread inductive reasoning with somewhat shaky support. You’ll remember that when I pressed you on your generalization, you said “there is no purpose to doing X given these limiting factors Y.” And I agreed with you. There would be no purpose in that case. But the generalization doesn’t automatically follow from that example.

It’s the same here in this article Adam linked. Just because one Australian man was able to avoid a violent encounter as a kid, does not make ridiculous the idea of protecting one’s home with a gun. And I don’t just mean a silly strawman, but in any case. To be fair, he may have other reasons for believing that. But I can only work with what I’m given.

I want to be clear that I’m always willing to agree to disagree. If someone says they’ve considered the issue and they still want to ban all guns, I can shake that person’s hand and we can go our separate ways. (Okay, maybe after a few parting shots!) I’ve always thought beliefs like that are based on values that are too difficult to change. And hey, who am I to say what the right values are?

Note that none of this has anything to do with “opinions” as you said. I can’t argue with opinions. For example, when the author of the article says “it’s not that hard to own a gun” and then rattles off a list of requirements that seem quite onerous to me, that’s his opinion. Everyone has different thresholds for annoyance.

By the way, anyone is welcome to point out when I’m being a jerk. I know I’m being one. It’s a human reaction to the jerky (in my opinion) ridicule of ideas I don’t find quite so funny. I’m not perfect. I’m sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings.

Usually I just ignore it and let people do their two minutes’ hate. Venting is healthy. I guess I’m just bored this week so I started picking at it.

4190

Agreed gun safety is an issue. It is a big focus of the NRA. (I’m not a member or a fan, but they do a lot of it.)

4191

While I did appreciate it his honesty, it was jarring to read it. Even though I am not a gun enthusiast, it made me understand why gun enthusiast are so resistant to any new rules, because they know that the ultimate objective is to ban guns. To me, it is like Trump calling for not allowing Muslim into the country. Even if I knew for a fact that banning Muslim would prevent another 9/11 scale attack, I’d still oppose it. Constitutional rights are the essence of this country, they are sacred. That includes both freedom of religion (1st amendment) and the 2nd amendment. It bothers me greatly when people try to do end runs around these constitutional rights. Now if Donald Trump wants to change the 1st amendment to allow bans on certain religions he is welcome to try, I’ll oppose it to my last breath. On the other hand, if Legowarrior wants to try and change the 2nd amendment, I’m actually open to making gun ownership more like Australia.

But the process matters, he and people that think we need to change how gun ownership works in this country need to modify the constitution. If the complaint is that is virtually impossible, I’ll say bullshit we have done it 23 times about once a decade. If the complaint is that it is hard, I say good the system works as designed.

4192

Well, the NRA changed the interpretation of the 2nd amendment back in the 70s. I just want to change it back. Bring the militia part back to the fore ground where it belongs.

Also, anyone who is taking life lessons from Jaws needs to have there head examined. How many deaths are there due to shark attacks in the US? It’s a most horrible ability, since Jaws created such a huge shark scared based on no evidence.

4193

Tim, where do you live? It sounds truly horrible. You appear to live in a constant state of fear about the possibility of a group of bikers kicking your front door down and then their back door in. I would hate to live, or even visit, somewhere where this happens so frequently that the only means of defence is a gun, rather than a humble light switch.

4194

That’s super weird that you think that about me. I was just chuckling in a post above about how silly it would be to imagine biker gangs invading homes in America. It seems to be an issue in Australia based on that article, though the author doesn’t mind.

I’m going to assume you’re trolling me.

4195

I saw a documentary about some police officer named Max. Biker gangs seem to be a serious problem down there.

4196

It’s not.

4197

Way to make my day!

4198

Two men drew handguns as they entered a cellphone store, 2051 E. 95th St., in the Calumet Heights neighborhood around 11 a.m., prompting a worker to take out his own firearm and shoot them, according to an account from employees given to Neil Tadros, who identified himself as the district manager for T-Mobile.

The employee shot both of the suspects, but they fled the store, got in a car and drove themselves to the hospital, Tadros said. At the time the suspects brandished weapons, employees acted, “pretty much to protect themselves when guns are drawn at them,” Tadros said.

“Thank God for concealed carry.”

4199

That was pretty dumb obviously. Shops have insurance. He played against the odds and had lack in his favour. Not a wise move when your life is at stake.

4200

Sorry, but I just can’t agree with your interpretation, as it assumes that the guys who came in with guns wouldn’t have shot anyone anyway. That assumption is not valid.

If someone comes in and points a gun at you, there is a good chance you are about to get shot. Passivity is not always the best response.

4201

Not my joke:

“But I thought T-Mobile was the uncarrier”

4202

That’s just absurd.

There are what, 10 firearm related deaths/100,000 in the US to firearms? So, roughly 32k deaths per year. 60% of those are suicide, so 13k to ‘other’ - murder, violent crime, accident, etc.

There were an estimated 325k robberies in 2015, 40% committed with firearms, so 130k.

Even if you suppose all 13k firearm related deaths occurred during armed robberies (which is itself obviously absurd), then at worst your chances of being killed in an armed robbery is 1/10, most likely much lower once narrowed down to just deaths during armed robberies.

Now sure, your chance of getting shot may be some factor higher than that, but not so high that the chance would be considered ‘good’ if you did nothing and just complied.

As opposed to pulling your own gun which would drastically increase your odds of getting shot at.

4203

It’s always hard to tell what’s going on in these stories because the details are so skimpy. The weirdest are the ones where it’s like a home invasion or the bad guy points a gun directly at someone, and then it says the good guy goes and gets a gun to return fire. Wait, huh? Did he just casually stroll to the other room to grab it?

4204

Dude, what you are saying is just total bullshit. If you have folks coming into your office and pointing guns at you, you have no idea wtf is going down. The crazy dude who shot the folks at planned parenthood, or the san bernadino shooters all started out the same way.

This is just a hillariously bullshit position to take, that somehow it makes sense to always just stand there and hope the guy pointing the gun at you isn’t gonna shot you. Because that’s all it is… just hope. Hope’s not a plan.

The guys who pulled out their guns and shot the bad guys did, clearly, the right thing… as judged by the fact that everything turned out for the best. The idea that somehow the results are literally governed by magical dice rolling and statistics is nonsensical. That’s not actually how the real world works. It’s not all random chance.

4205

Yeah, that’s not how you argue against statistics.

Good luck in the Wild West.

4206

Statistics don’t govern a real world situation though. You don’t plan your actions in an ACTUAL situation based upon an abstract statistical analysis, because by their very nature that analysis doesn’t take into consideration salient features of your case.

Statistics can say that on average, in the abstract sense, COA X will lead to outcome Y. But this isn’t how you plan your actions in the actual world when you have way more information about the ACTUAL situation you are in.