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Pulpsmack -> RE: Breaking, 25 People killed in V.T. shooting. (4/18/2007 10:09:10 PM)
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Murder / Kill. - Kill / Murder. That's some powerful hairsplitter you have there.
I was replying to the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument, using reflective verbiage. We are discussing a mass murder with firearms, remember? Don’t go all semantic on us.
This is a matter that goes far beyond semantics when you bring misleading statistics into the equation. What you initially wrote was about killing and I challenged that. You tried to refute my challenge with statistics about murder. It’s not an un-dotted “I” or a mis-crossed “T” there. They are completely different arguments with completely different statistical outcomes, so don’t play the “semantics game" when your sloppy/mistaken word usage put you into an entirely different argument.
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Rights? Legal rights? As a Canadian, the US Constitution has scant relevance to me. If I were a US citizen I’d say – just because the Constitution offers a limited right to carry arms for a highly specific purpose, that does not negate my right NOT to get shot without damned good reason. (But without a gun to enforce that claim, do I have any rights at all?)
As a Canadian, your input has scant relevance to the discussion at large. I don’t say this as a haughty American looking down my nose at this “foreigner who has the audacity to tell us how to live in our own country”. I say this a person who is making an argument under an entirely different set of rules and circumstances. You and I can have a circle jerk based on logic, emotion, morality and equity. But at the end of the day you are ignorant of our history and our laws, and simply choose to color outside of those lines as it suits you since it has “scant relevance to you”. This topic is about a school slaying in the United States and consequences that have transpired from it. This isn’t about what is going on in Canada, or what you should do there. This is an argument on what is going on here and what we should/not do here. If you care to make a commentary upon our society, and/or our rules, then you must do so within the bounds of what the rules mean (not make your own willy-nilly interpretation of them), or your argument has little meaning.
The constitution does NOT offer a limited right to carry arms. “Shall not be infringed” is quite clear that the right is not limited. Moreover, your right not to get shot, as you so “masterfully articulate” has NOTHING to do with the legal exercise of my Second Amendment rights. As a legally responsible individual, I don’t break the law. I don’t subscribe to “hold my beer and watch this” tomfoolery. I don’t treat/use my firearms negligently. Therefore, there is no way you are going to get shot by me or my guns unless you have it coming to you (by intending to cause death or great bodily harm to me or another close to me). Your right not to get shot cannot be asserted by regulating the Second Amendment. Other than negligence of a legal firearm you have ZERO chance dying from a gun unless it is unlawfully employed, and that can and might happen whether or not there is a right to bear arms.
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There is an unfair burden of proof here – while you may say what you like, deny and demean others without substantiation, others are expected to make legal arguments, exhibit flawless reasoning and provide annotated statistics for every opinion they have the audacity to offer in your presence.
On the contrary, the burden is perfectly fair. I own something… I was born into this country with a legal right. You and your kind (by argument) seek to deprive me of that right or infringe upon this. Therefore, the burden of proof fairly shifts upon you to illustrate why it is proper to take away my right. If you cannot come up with valid and convincing reasons why this right should be restrained/removed, then all I need to do is shut my mouth and keep this right as it is and as it was intended to be.
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There is a clear difference between gun crime and negligent vehicle use, namely intent. Conflating the two serves your argument by heaping distractions on the issue of gun violence. The devices both have impacts on public safety but that is where their commonality as instruments of death ends. As you point out, any tool can cause death when misused but guns cause death when used properly as well. You can commit murder with a car and scratch your ass with a gun – that doesn’t make all cars weapons or all guns ass-scratchers.
One can make comparisons between any number of things but to equate them is another matter. The law makes distinctions between outcomes all the time and the example of hate crime you chose illustrates this. In Canada at least, hate crime is different from common assault precisely because of the formation of intent the hatred implies and because it targets identifiable groups and not just individuals. Murder comes in several different degrees as well. We make such distinctions as a matter of legal course. First and second degree murder compare but don't equate.
I bear the responsibility of bringing a bad analogy into the mix that doesn’t translate well, because we can’t say that the exercise of Hate crimes are a constitutionally protected activity whereas the exercise of assault is a privilege.
Comparing the (mis)use of firearms in such a discussion with motor vehicles however, is not a distraction, and it is completely relevent. Look at why we discuss guns and regulations regarding them. Why do we do so, because they’re icky? No. We do so because they are considered by some as a public health hazard which left unchecked is a significant problem to the lives and well being of those who live with them in their society. There are only two differences between guns and motor vehicles in that regard:
1.Ignorant people place moral value judgments on firearms that they do not place on automobiles for whatever reasons.
2. Owning/legally operating firearms is a constitutionally protected activity, whereas owning/operating a vehicle is not and as such it is subject to fewer protections in terms of regulation.
Unless you have some other argument besides “guns are icky”, or the one that I have just outlined, then we can proceed without the “distraction” that cars and guns (and regulations thereof) are an incomparable distraction themselves.
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Sure sport shooting and motor-sports are both recreational but car racing is about getting there the fastest while target shooting is about hitting the target. If the finish line represents the destination what does the target represent? The fact that more rounds are fired in a practice or recreational context than in an aggressive context, does not change the purpose of the device – delivering an effective dose of lead to a desired location. That is not in the dictionary under dual use.
You painted yourself into a corner. A gun is designed as you say to ignite a cartridge, which propels a "dose of lead" to a designated destination. A vehicle is designed to ignite fuel, which propels a "dose of steel, glass and rubber" along with its passengers to a designated destination. The fundamental difference rests upon the motives and intent of the user (good, bad, or ugly). Both can be tools, toys, or killing machines. The intent of the creator is irrelevant. Nobel created dynamite with nothing but benign intentions, yet look what came from it. So, because dynamite was created with the intent of blasting for contracting purposes, we celebrate it. Yet when John Moses Browning delivered unto mankind a work of art known as the 1911 .45 Automatic for the purpose of killing enemy combatants, we must consider that an evil, even though they can be built from scratch as precision race guns that have a purpose no better or worse than a race car. I’m sorry… your argument loses here.
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Guns are a reality of our world and are not going away anytime soon. That doesn’t mean that when guns are used to commit atrocities of this sort we should resign ourselves to getting more guns. I recognise that there is no practical way to ban all guns and that it is impossible to say if doing so would significantly reduce violence but it is pretty clear that promoting and permitting more pervasive gun carrying will not make things any better. Expecting that dangerous devices be controlled is not “legislating morality”.
I cannot speak for everybody contributing to these threads, but I never advocated getting more guns, or thrusting them into the hands of anybody. I simply advocate the free exercise of a Constitutional right by any who wish to exercise it. You say that promoting or permitting more pervasive gun carry will not make things any better. Again… another unfounded statement. During the early 2000s more and more states began to consider the issuance of concealed carry permits. People debated the merits along the lines that we have thus far. Last I looked which was a few years ago the antis were stymied by drops in violent crimes in areas where licensing was granted and used. If you have solid evidence that illustrates that permissive/pervasive carry of legal firearms by qualified individuals does not make things any better, I would like to see it. Even if the waters are murky… so long as it is not patiently proven it makes things worse, there is NO reason to prohibit it, particularly when it is a potential tool to combat the incident that spawned this discussion.
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