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Aswad -> RE: Gunman kills 5 on Illinois Campus (2/15/2008 4:12:51 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: kittinSol
Why don't you see that there is a correlation between how and why these horrible murders occur? Is the link so obscure that nobody sees it?
By using the word why, I was referencing intent.
If I want to kill someone, it doesn't matter whether guns exist or not. That just dictates the methods available to me.
Yes, some methods are more likely to succeed (like knives), and some have side effects (like guns), etc.
No, the methods are not causally linked to the intent, merely to the consequences of it.
That leaves us with two questions to consider.
First, there is the question of results. We have the benefit of there being places with, and places without, gun control. If the right set of statistics are collected, we can find out what the cost and gain are for each option, and pad the difference with liberty (as an individual, I default to the position that a representative state should adopt a policy of non-interference with lives). The cost and gain must be well documented, and itemized. If anyone truly cared about which is the better option, that is what they would focus on. Questions include the causal relationship, as well as the extent to which accidents are confined to the person opting to own a gun or not. I am interested in the cost to non-parties to the decision to own one. If the net number of accidents wherein the victims are not the owner of the gun or his/her household (cf. statistics on drowning; we allow the HoH to choose that risk for a household), plus the number of wrongful uses of a legally owned gun, are less than the reduction in violent crime, then it is clear that they should be allowed. If the reduction is less, however, then it is equally clear that it becomes a question of tradeoffs between lives lost and liberties lost.
Second, there is the question of causes. In this, I can only say that I see that there is a complex interplay of factors that together make up a system whose complexity is such that my feeble mind is unable to grasp more than the faintest outline of it. Greater minds may be able to contain it, but an equally reasonable option is to rely on the ultimate computer: reality. By resolving the factors we can observe and clearly demonstrate (and there's plenty of those to deal with; gun control does not stand alone in determining life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), we incrementally improve things for everyone. And in my experience, doing so makes the system progressively less complicated, as the noise is lowered and the individual remaining factors become apparent. Thus, it seems useful to get the whole question of gun control out of the way by addressing the results as I outlined above, so we can get on with improving other aspects of our lives and the societies within which we live them.
Perhaps I have made my point clearer now.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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