Tuesday, November 14, 2017

A request to the gun nuts

I suppose it is too early after the child murders in California today to talk about gun control. I don't know how long we are supposed to wait. However long that is, could you gun nuts please call a moratorium on mass child murders for the appropriate length of time so we can get on with it?


10 comments:

  1. Some other kids may have died swimming in a pool somewhere, so Skipper doesn't care.

    And let's be honest, Harry, Skipper is the only gun nut reading this blog, so you should as well get back to answering him since this post has all but his name.

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  2. I have another site with some hundreds of readers. So it was addressed to gun nuts generally

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  3. It is hard for some people to keep up:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/us/politics/trump-offers-condolences-for-the-wrong-mass-shooting.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=1&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F11%2F15%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-offers-condolences-for-the-wrong-mass-shooting.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

    "Tuesday’s shooting in Northern California was the 17th mass shooting this month, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive."

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  4. I have another site with some hundreds of readers.

    Which one is that?

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  5. [Clovis:] Some other kids may have died swimming in a pool somewhere, so Skipper doesn't care.

    You got that one backwards -- it's not that I don't care.

    Rather, it is a fact that more children under the age of 12 drown than are killed with guns. Harry is on a For The Children jeremiad against guns, yet has not a darn thing to say about swimming pools.

    Which is singularly odd considering not only that drownings cause more deaths absolutely, but that swimming pools are thousands of times more dangerous than guns on a per unit basis -- there are about 1,000 guns for every swimming pool.

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  6. (BTW, Harry mirrors this blog at Maui News. Judging by the number of comments, his readers number in the low nones.)

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  7. Skipper,

    No, I did not get that argument backwards, I only made fun of it, because it is a non-sense argument.

    There are all sorts of regulations over swimming pools, as for example the necessity of proper grids over the sinks, in order to not allow a kid to get stuck by suction when touching it.

    Were you to take your analogy seriously, you should be prepared to accept greater regulation to guns too.

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  9. [Clovis:]Were you to take your analogy seriously, you should be prepared to accept greater regulation to guns too. 

    It isn't an analogy, it is a corollary. Take Harry's argument as read: Guns cause dead children, therefore guns should be confiscated, and anyone who thinks otherwise is morally or intellectually deficient.

    If that is sound, then so is this: Pools cause even more dead children than guns, therefore pools should be confiscated, and anyone who thinks otherwise is morally or intellectually deficient.

    The effect justifies the consequence.

    That's the first problem. The second is the assertion that there aren't any laws regulating guns -- there are a great many laws, many quite restrictive. The shooter in Texas violated about six laws, aided by the grotesque incompetence of federal employees who couldn't be fussed to do their job.  Which leaves a further question: since existing laws aren't enforced, why add more? Or, perhaps more to the point, exactly what greater regulation would make any difference?

    Compounding that is the mind boggling fact that a guy who beat and choked his wife before fracturing an 18 month old child's skull got only one year in jail.

    There are lots of gun laws, particularly limiting possession and making straw buys illegal. Guess how often the government prosecutes any of them? 

    So, please reconsider your response in view of the existing extensive regulation, and the woeful lack of enforcement. 

    And having done that, re-address why Harry's argument is valid, and my corollary argument isn't.

    (Of course, my argument isn't valid, for exactly the same reason Harry's isn't.)

    BTW, you called me a gun nut. Why?

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