A discussion of Gun Control for schrafinator

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No, although you also insulted me as you suggest above, you did insult me for not having gotten involved. If you are not even going to admit this, then I really have no use in talking to you, as you are certainly a liar.

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Holmes, I do no recall saying that to you, and if I did say it it was not what I meant to say. So please show me the text in which I said this. I think its much more likely that your penchant for extending your opponents case attributed this to me without me actually saying it. But if you can show me that I did, I will withdraw it.Adults can do that sort of thing.

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I love this contradiction in you. You rip up the US and Israel for killing civilians all the time, and point to the hypocrisy when they deny that ability to others. And then here you are saying it is legitimate. Which is it Contra?

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Look, you're making a comparions here I have repeatedly rejected and explained. Its got to the point that this is just cross-posting topics. I only point out the US killing of civilians because the US pretends to care about civilians. As I tried to show you, in the context of ther national liberation struggle and an armed populace, the concept of civilian itself is dubious. Highlighting the Wests moral hypocrisy does not require I adopt a particular stance on the matter. I think you are a hypocrite for complainaing about Palestinians killing civilians while turning a blind eye to Israel doing the same. I see that argument as hypocritical - my own stance on the matter is entirely unrelated to that.

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My position is that blowing up purely civilian targets has just about 0 military value, besides its reduction of possible recruits and demoralization of soldiers. Killing civilians is mainly a political tool.

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I largely agree, except that I don't accept a hard line exists between civilians and the military in the first place, in a moral sense. But I'm not the one making a big deal out of the issue - its the critics of Palestinian resistance who are. I can show that they are inconsistent in this regard.

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Yet you have not moved to show how the specific actions are a credible threat to the enemy state. That is where the debate is, and NOT what you just posed above.

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The state is an expression of its populace. It is abundantly clear that the populace feels the threat - that is why they are building a wall. A credible threat has been delivered - not to notional state apparatus, which is largely irrelevant, but to the lives of the members of that state.

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Again, what is your position? On the one hand you talk like being able to just scratch is a good thing... but then in this thread you argue well if nails are liable to get infections and accidentally scratch the furniture, then the cat should be declawed because the scratching won't do much anyway.

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In fact, I was trying to point out the lunacy of trying to construct universalist moralities like that. I never said that the scratching was GOOD. I said it was UNSRUPRISING. So if we wanted to, we could pass a law saying cats being choked Should Not scratch, and are morally culpable for scratching. So what - is there any expectation that this moral critique will have any effect on the "decisions" of a cat being choked? You keepo trying to create moral precepts out of the realities of the world - but there is no particular reason to think that the world runs on moral principles (unless you are theist). This is completely different to personal owbership of a weapon where little or no threat exists.

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This is not true. There is no necessary link here. If so, then one would expect to see much greater rates of accidents in places where lots of guns are owned, irrespective of the training of those owning them. It is training and not just numbers of guns which will determine the number of accidents.

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Sure, conceded. It seems that the swiss arrangaments produce many fewer fatalities, off the cuff, but it also seems that the absence of weapons produces many fewer fatalities than training. Again, my interest is not identifying who is culpable, but simply in preventing people from dying.I'm going to come back to your ranting about the Palestine seperately, as its very very nearly off topic here; this is a thread about gun control, not a thread about moral absolutes I am falsely alleged to hold.I checked up with some friends of mine as to what the legal requirements for gun ownership in South africa are, to provide some comparison to the state of the law in the USA, such as it is. We all checked into this, as 16 year old boys do.The weapon is defined is the barrel.
Every barrel has its marking recorded in a database.
You must apply for a license to own the weapon, for which there is a nominal fee.
In order to apply for the license, you must demonstrate that you have a safe suitable for storing the weapon.
The weapon must be EITHER on your person OR stored in the safe at all times. (one exception: it can be loaned to a family member as a proxy of the owner; the owner retains full responsibility)
When it is stored in the safe, it must be disassembled. Specifically as I recall, the firing pin and the barrel must be seperated from the rest of the assembly, and from each other.
The ammunition for the weapon must be stored 15 feet away from the (disassembled) weapon.Pointing a weapon at a person, under any circumstances (even frex if it is not loaded), constitutes assault and may be construed as an attempt to kill.The owner of the weapon (that is, the licence holder) is always responsible for the weapon even if it is someone elses hands. It is explicitly expected that a gun will be put into the hands of other family members, including young children. The owner remains responsible at all times.If a weapon licensed to you kills someone, you will almost always be considered to be an accessory before the fact unless that weapon has been reported lost or stolen (the same actually applies to individual rounds of ammunition, but its unenforceable). You may be held responsible for the loss of your weapon even if it was stolen if it can be shown that you had not adherred to the safe storage procedures mandated by law above.---And with all that said, most people I know slept with their guns loaded under their pillow. Of the two guns I know to have been stolen, 1 was stolen from under such a pillow.---I seperatelty wanted to address the issue of civil ownership of guns for the purpose of resisting the state, as seen in the south african context. What the civil freedom to own guns meant, in practice, was that the rich were armed to the teeth, and the poor were unarmed. This meant that the little, local domestic situations in which the poor and the rich interacted often exhibited a degree of threat; it was precisely because a rich farm owner could present deadly threat to their servants that the servants were kept in line.So, a thought experiment: can a slave-owning society exist without the private ownership of weapons? I suspect that if slave-owners, like those in the west during the period of chattel slavery, did not possess the power of deadly force, large-scale slave ownership would never have been sustainable.This message has been edited by contracycle, 08-12-2004 07:08 AM

For context:Me: I disagree that the assassination of the tourism minister had any effect different to that of a suicide bombing - it was widely condemned as yet another example of Palestinain brutality.Holmes: Poor analysis. The man was involved with extremist groups and so they hit a true member of their opposition. It certainly had more effect than killing people on the street level of Israeli life with no control over the extremists they are fighting.Me: True enough. It was a poor analysis.... by CNN. So in terms of the PR campaign of which you are so enamoured, it was another failure that showed why there can never be peace in PalestineHolmes: Okay, here is your challenge LIAR. You find me the CNN analysis which said what I just said, and the evidence you used to come up with the connection from that analysis and my analysis.
Here's the deal LIAR, I didn't get it from CNN and there is no connection. I am so sick of this kind of debate from you I can't hack it anymore.You will note, Homes, that nowhere did I say YOUR analysis came from CNN — you have attributed that to me. What I said was that the analysis CNN gave was that the assassination of the Tourism minister was another act of Palestinian brutality that justified the Israeli position. Thus, from the Palestinian perspective, assassinating the tourism minister was no better in PR terms than killing civilians. And this indeed is what CNN’s transcripts show:http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0110/18/bn.06.htmlAARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: A major development in the Middle East. After yesterday's assassination of a minister in the government of Israel, the Palestinian Authority has taken some action as demanded by the Israeli government.Mike Hanna in our Jerusalem bureau joins us now and can give us details.Mike, good evening to you.MIKE HANNA, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF: Good evening to you, Aaron.Well, still no complete clarity as to exactly what the Palestinian Authority is doing. Sources within the Palestinian Authority say that they are investigating the possibility of declaring groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Israeli Cabinet minister yesterday, outlawed.BROWN: And Mike, even if that were to happen -- even if the Palestinian Authority were to outlaw the military wing or the entire organization, would that likely satisfy the Israeli demand in the aftermath of the assassination of the tourism minister?HANNA: Well, the Israelis have demanded more than action being taken against the PFLP. It has also demanded that those responsible for the killing be handed over to the Israeli authorities.Now, the Palestinians have never done this. They are unlikely to do it. And, in fact, today they have been absolutely adamant that they will not, under any circumstances, hand over people they capture to the Israelis.The question of taking action, of arrests, that may go some way to satisfying Israeli demands, but the Israeli demand is for those guilty to be handed over to them. That is not going to be satisfied, at least according to the Palestinian Authority -- Aaron.http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0204/25/bn.01.htmlCAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We have breaking news to tell you about now from the Middle East. A court convening in the Ramallah compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has now convicted four Palestinians for last fall's killing of an Israeli cabinet minister.CNN's Mike Hanna is covering the story in Ramallah. Mike, what can you tell us?MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it's a bizarre situation, and certainly does appear to have been a bizarre legal process. It has been announced that four men, who were charged with the assassination of last year of the Israeli tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, have been tried and found guilty in a Palestinian legal process within the compound of Yasser Arafat.COSTELLO: So this was sort of like an olive branch held out by Yasser Arafat to the Israelis?HANNA: Well, very much so on one level. There have been demands, and from the U.S. as well, a very strong demand last week from President Bush, that these men be brought to justice. The whole question of whether justice has been served in this case, well, that is open to debate. It was not a court. It was an extraordinary military tribunal, as it is called, a makeshift military tribunal is the way the Palestinians describe it.But certainly, Yasser Arafat apparently wanting to make clear that he is intent on bringing justice in this particular case, that he is taking action against those who assassinated that Israeli tourism minister. However, from Israel's point of view, this is not enough, not even going into the debates about whether or not this was a proper trial. They continue to insist that the man must be handed over, a position that the Palestinians say is against every previous agreement and against the terms of the Oslo Accords, that it is not needed for the Palestinians to do so.You will note the whole tenor of these reports is the justice that Palestine owes to Israel for the assassination of the tourism minister. President Bush and the US state department demanded exactly this, and makes no bones about the fact that they consider the Israeli’s to be the injured party.In terms of your model, we should have expected the assassination of this extremist to be seen as more legitimate than the murder of civilians, but in fact not such distinction is drawn either by the USA or by western media organs such as CNN. As such, the Palestinians have no PR benefit to gain by restricting their attacks to the Israeli military. The US is determined to construe all acts of resistance by the Palestinians as immoral and outrageous.This message has been edited by contracycle, 08-12-2004 07:29 AM

You had me at... I took a look back and realized I completely misread your statement. You not only don't have to vindicate YOUR position, I am obligated to apologize.I am sincerely sorry for mistaking what you were saying, and acting like a complete ass about it (which even Nosy pointed out).But this said, while I think your analysis of the US response and CERTAIN political repercussions was correct, it is missing the point I was making.Let's pretend first that it had the exact same PR problems as any bombing, it had real POLITICAL and MILITARY effects within Israel itself. More so than an average random bombing. Indeed, that is exactly why Israel really wanted blood... specific blood... after that. Why it was set as preconditions for movement on negotiations.They had hit a REAL target, which shook things up... I guess I would put it as they had finally created a real threat to the extremist gov't. Not just a credible threat that someone may get killed, but that important leadership targets could get hit, AND THE PERPETRATORS GOT AWAY.You overplay my insistence on gaining political leverage (via PR), and (and this could be a fault of my using vague wording) confused my discussion of political success with pure PR success.Because of my shameful display in both misreading your post, and overreacting to that misreading, I am self-imposing a be nicer to contra policy.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Okay, now it's your turn. From the very beginning I have rejected this charge and explained what my position is.I have even pointed out that the only reason I wasn't actively discusses Israeli policy is that it was a thread specifically discussing PARTICULAR PALESTINIAN policies. In more general threads and those regarding Israel, I have been an outspoken critic of Israel and its policies.So can you PLEASE stop asserting that I have this hypocritical position? I don't even need an apology, just an acknowledgment that that is not MY position and no more attacks based on that. They are not only building a wall but further persecuting Palestinians. It is obviously a difference in opinion between us whether they'd be killing more, the same, or fewer Palestinians without the attacks of Palestinian extremists as cover. So maybe we can't go anywhere on that topic as it is pure conjecture.However, in general, a "credible threat" that scares an enemy into real action which is a greater threat to onesself is not of any military value. The only "credible threat" which is useful militarily is the one that puts an enemy out of commission.My bear analogy was pretty good at addressing that difference. Okay, if this is your position, then I would like to see some evidence for it. And I would like to know what criteria you use for the (numerical or definitional) line separating accidental fatalities happen but something can remain free, and accidental fatalities happen but something cannot remain free.The car analogy comes into play here and so you can use that as the counterexample (unless you think cars should be restricted as well). That sounded pretty reasonable to me. The only thing which is a little silly is the barrel database. I mean I don't think it hurts anyone, but I'd love to see the results of having it in a cost-benefit ratio. It is easy enough to alter barrels, or have them change over time through use, and criminals could just as easily buy guns on the black market (you mentioned this yourself) where they wouldn't be printed anyway. Weapons? Probably not. Firearms? Without question. There have been numerous examples of prefirearm civilizations which lived off a slave economy. In the end firearms wouldn't make a difference, except as you noted, if only the rich got to carry them.One could go further of course and point out that in the US, if we "outlawed" guns then we would in essence have handed all the guns to the wealthy. After all private security and local law enforcement would still be able to have them, and they would be owned by the "elite".

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)