Reply #92: Facts trump opinion, even honest opinion. [View All]

[TPaine7]

If you're so relaxed with everybody armed to the teeth and you trust them so much with guns, why can't you trust them with less firepower? Your carrying a gun shows that to some degree, you don't trust the people, strangers, in your environment already, and you're saying that you find them trustworthy with guns then. Why would you arm yourself if you didn't think somebody was hostile or irresponsible? If people are, just ordinarily, armed with such weapons, you could expect criminals to be armed that well, just from stealing and selling the weapons. There's presumably nothing about putting guns into people's hands that makes them more responsible, or better people.

I trust the people in general with guns. I don't trust violent convicted felons. I don't trust them to not keep and bear arms. I don't trust them to not attack me or others. The fact that I trust sane, non-criminal adults doesn't mean that I think the world is free of threats.

One thing worse than being attacked by thugs, is being attacked by thugs who are as well armed as you, and the worst would be if they have the drop on you, too.

In a world free of guns, thugs would be more sure of their prey than they are now. By their nature, thugs attack the smaller, the older, the weaker, the less numerous.

If they get the drop on you, it doesn't matter if you're armed or not.

That's simply not true. Your imagination is not as valid as actual reality. I have read many case stories, and posted many here. I've seen videotaped counterexamples on youtube. Here's one post of mine on "the bad guys always win" fallacy: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=195218&mesg_id=195218

If they get the drop on you, it doesn't matter if you're armed or not. I've heard that Giffords was armed, too. In Arizona with such a crowd, I'm presuming at least several other people were armed. Did it really help?

I have no intention of impugning either your intelligence or your integrity; for all I know you're as honest and smart as they come. But you're making multiple, compound errors in reasoning.

1) You accept your counter-factual intuition as fact: "If they get the drop on you, it doesn't matter if you're armed or not."
2) You combine reported facts with supposition and use them in support of the first error: "I've heard that Giffords was armed, too. In Arizona with such a crowd, I'm presuming at least several other people were armed."
3) You draw draw a broad, general conclusion from a single anecdote and your intuition.

you give the impression that you should shoot into the melee and kill every one of them regardless of whether you might hit the child or not

No, I don't. You may have drawn that conclusion, but you were totally without justification. The reason I would want lots of ammunition in that situation is that it's hard to predict wild animal behavior.

It should take one bullet shot or one dog being killed to get them to run, it wouldn't be necessary to have a great amount of bullets. Though I would say while it's happening, you'll wish that you did.

If I may be so bold, it seems to me that you are very sure about things that you have nothing but your imagination to support. I actually know, from discussions with a cop and reading of dog attacks, that different dogs behave differently. Some run. Some attack. It probably never occurred to you that I might be a sane person who had the child's interest (and my own) at heart, but had a factual basis for my opinion, did it?

In just the sentence before this, you said "bullets are more reliable." In other words, you can't reliably kill 20 people without a gun.

What I actually said was that "guns are a more effective and surer tool of defense than mace." My whole argument had nothing whatsoever to do with killing anyone, it had only to do with defence--the death of the assailant is unnecessary and irrelevant. I'm trying not to doubt your honesty. Help me out, won't you?

About the founders, one of the reasons for the Second Amendment was, as Hamilton said in the Federalist Papers, the country was surrounded by hostile Native Americans. So, in other words, it was part of the plan to annihilate the "hostile savages." You're right they were wise; this was very effective.

:sarcasm:

Try not to forget that was a large part of their reasoning.

Ok. I was talking about the legitimate political reasoning, not the use of the right to keep and bear arms to illegitimate ends. I do not reject every belief, idea, or philosophy that has been twisted to evil ends.

Not all of the founders were pious hypocrites. Benjamin Franklin and my namesake opposed slavery, for instance. Jefferson's hypocrisy notwithstanding, I still believe that we are all (politically) equal.

Gun technology has changed a lot since then. You definitely weren't going to kill twenty people on a spree . . . with a musket. I think what we have now goes a little beyond their wisdom.

Your opinions should be more anchored in facts. Educate yourself. Lewis and Clark carried a repeating rifle in their exploration of the West. And the framers of the 14th Amendment clearly intended that guns of their time be protected by the Constitution. Repeating weapons were definitely common then. Muskets indeed.