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Post by Cornflake on Feb 17, 2018 20:27:38 GMT -5
"I would think establishing a commission of multi disciplinary experts including representatives from the firearm industry and NRA to comprehensively assess the issue using all available data and make recommendations to Congress would be logical."
Me too, but it doesn't seem to be a prevalent view.
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Post by Village Idiot on Feb 17, 2018 21:27:52 GMT -5
I'm waiting to see if this thread turns into a real intellectual but reality based discussion on the possible ways of at least lessening the violence problem we're having. I can always hope. First of course we'll have to get all the personal problems and ideologies out of the way. As far as I can tell, no one here is the type to shoot up a school or a church or mosque or synagogue. I can't tell about country music festivals. We do have gun people and non-gun people, left and right, artists, academics, journalists and working stiffs. I would seem to be a reasonable cross section of U.S. residents, so, like congress, it should be possible to debate ideas civilly. Maybe someone has a good idea. Good ideas have to be possible as well as functional. I agree with you Bruce. I assume you're not just mentioning the forum, but everyone. In that light maybe, at first, we should just start by listening to each other. We all have the same goal in mind, so we should listen to each other. From Anytown USA early morning coffee gatherings to federal level meetings among senators, just listening to each other. No agenda, no striving to prove right or wrong, just listening to each other. Listen, listen. And then we should all hold hands and sing Kumbaya to the gentle plucking of Tamarack's new banjo. Because it's never going to happen.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 17, 2018 21:41:18 GMT -5
For starters, we have to face the fact that none of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights is absolute, if only because they inevitably wind up in conflict with each other. That means that implementing them involves drawing lines, balancing the conflicting demands. And that means that "it depends" and "how far does that go?" and "what's the meaning of (insert crucial term here)?" come into play. That means framing definitions, writing laws, and establishing protocols to cope with the obvious conflicts. Does freedom of religion include human sacrifice? Does freedom of speech include perjury? Does the right to bear arms extend to keeping, say, poison gas or ground-to-air missiles? There are going to be pretty obvious limits to any right, so the challenge is to work inward from those perhaps-absurd limit cases to find where it gets really tough.
The tools to work this out aren't impossibly arcane, but they do require a pretty broad range of knowledge: law and history, linguistics and semantics, psychology and anthropology, and at the bottom epistemology and ethics. (How do we know what we know? What do you mean "immoral"?) And even so, there will come times when which side of a conflict gets favored is a matter of judgment. And every such choice is subject to review and reassessment as our understanding of a situation changes--or as someone stretches the rules and expectations to produce a new problem.
So about guns: Unless one is willing to argue that anyone physically capable of managing a firearm has an absolute right to own and openly carry any variety of weapon anywhere, you have to start making distinctions and drawing lines: who, what, where, under what circumstances? This means, for a bare start, developing a model of responsible personhood and a taxonomy of weaponry.
For starters, I'll concede that "assault rifle" is an inadequate category. But there are reasonable questions about what kind of firearm we should allow to be carried out in public--or even owned by private parties. Personally, I'm not comfortable with the notion of somebody toting a Skorpion around Walmart under his overcoat. (Yeah, I know--full-auto is already heavily regulated. But 2A absolutists argue against that.) Nor am I comfortable at the prospect of any old undergrad carrying in Cezarija's classrooms, and I'm not sure whether open or concealed bothers me more.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2018 21:42:03 GMT -5
Let's remember that a half a million people were hacked to death with machetes in Rwanda. Guns are not the problem. They are, however, an extremely effective tool of the problem. Until that becomes obvious, we are all spinning our wheels.
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Post by james on Feb 17, 2018 21:46:19 GMT -5
I am not sure that the Rwandan genocide is an apt analogy.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2018 22:00:29 GMT -5
I am not sure that the Rwandan genocide is an apt analogy. Of course. The fact that lots of people can be killed with weapons other than guns doesn't fit the narrative. Disarm the population and machetes are a poor choice against tanks.
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 17, 2018 22:02:46 GMT -5
"I would think establishing a commission of multi disciplinary experts including representatives from the firearm industry and NRA to comprehensively assess the issue using all available data and make recommendations to Congress would be logical." Me too, but it doesn't seem to be a prevalent view. I'd disagree. Our system has effectively done that for decades. The problem is that it's not capable of being a ruthlessly data-driven question. Compare, for instance, the roughly 2000 gun deaths annually (not including suicides) vs. the millions of guns and users that annually kill no one. There is simply no rational argument for more gun control given that current gun controls don't seem to be particularly effective. What's the old joke about being delusional? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2018 22:25:59 GMT -5
I'm all for exploring the possibility of solutions. But only if we are just as capable of concluding and accepting through that effort that the central government cannot solve it. It's just that recent history would seem to indicate an inability or unwillingness to accept this. In fact, just the opposite -- we are now incapable of accepting local or personal responsibility in solving problems and our first impulse is to look to government for them -- even when it is or has been government that caused the problem in the first place.
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Post by james on Feb 17, 2018 22:46:23 GMT -5
?
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Post by billhammond on Feb 17, 2018 23:26:47 GMT -5
I found this letter to the editor in the Strib today good food for thought:
Obstacles to stronger gun laws are ‘political, not constitutional’
How do we stop the gun violence? (“Start with facts …,” editorial, Feb. 16.) How do we close the gates on the horrific bloodshed that floods our schools, music concerts and church basements? Our U.S. Supreme Court holds the key.
It appears in the 2008 Heller case, in which Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was embraced for his “originalist” views on the Second Amendment, wrote in the majority opinion: “… nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” In a footnote, Scalia added: “We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.” We see that Scalia recommends a variety of firearm regulations.
Scalia’s Supreme Court opinion is ignored by the NRA and by our beloved Congress. In fact, the NRA recommends that schoolteachers carry guns and that felons be eligible gun buyers. Ironically, a bill passed the U.S. House and is in the Senate that allows concealed-carry laws to cross state lines. Holy cow! This is more congressional madness.
According to Duke University law Prof. Joseph Blocher, “roughly 95 percent of Second Amendment challenges brought since the 2008 Heller case have failed, and the evolving doctrine leaves ample room for reasonable gun regulations. The primary obstacles to stronger gun laws remain political, not constitutional.” In my view, those elected leaders who refuse to agree with Justice Scalia’s prohibitions have the blood of innocents on their hands.
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Post by jdd2 on Feb 17, 2018 23:37:06 GMT -5
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 18, 2018 0:20:27 GMT -5
I'm all for exploring the possibility of solutions. But only if we are just as capable of concluding and accepting through that effort that the central government cannot solve it. It's just that recent history would seem to indicate an inability or unwillingness to accept this. In fact, just the opposite -- we are now incapable of accepting local or personal responsibility in solving problems and our first impulse is to look to government for them -- even when it is or has been government that caused the problem in the first place. Central government--or any organized, collective agency-- addresses problems in order to do what is possible, practical, practicable, affordable, tolerable, etc. To jump to "central government can't solve X" is to jump to the conclusion that only solutions are acceptable. Governments (or labor unions or NGOs) can and do ameliorate or minimize some classes of problem. As for "local or personal responsibility": how does that address, say, environmental pollution, which may originate across jurisdictional boundaries or from economically powerful entities? Responsibility requires control, and control of events that originate outside my personal or local sphere of control require instrumentalities of more-than-personal-or-local scope. The voices I hear complaining most loudly about government's inability to cope come mostly from the libertarian right and from corporate shills hoping to clear away regulatory barriers to their clients' activities.
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Post by millring on Feb 18, 2018 6:45:22 GMT -5
I'm all for exploring the possibility of solutions. But only if we are just as capable of concluding and accepting through that effort that the central government cannot solve it. It's just that recent history would seem to indicate an inability or unwillingness to accept this. In fact, just the opposite -- we are now incapable of accepting local or personal responsibility in solving problems and our first impulse is to look to government for them -- even when it is or has been government that caused the problem in the first place. To jump to "central government can't solve X" is to jump to the conclusion that only solutions are acceptable. Governments (or labor unions or NGOs) can and do ameliorate or minimize some classes of problem. And that, as you know, it twisting what I said 160 o to make my comment sound unreasonable. I'm only saying (and you might get more cooperation) that if we had the confidence that the government would be judged on the effectiveness of their policies rather than their good intentions, and if there was even the possibility that inherent in that "bipartisanship cooperation" so demanded that they could also in a bipartisan fashion conclude that certain proposals are unworkable, impractical, or even wrong-headed, then, ironically more could "get done" "for the American people" (I hope I didn't miss any political cliches. I had to highlight them with quotes so's not to be missed) As for "local or personal responsibility": how does that address, say, environmental pollution, which may originate across jurisdictional boundaries or from economically powerful entities? Responsibility requires control, and control of events that originate outside my personal or local sphere of control require instrumentalities of more-than-personal-or-local scope. It may not. Why do you ask?
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Post by brucemacneill on Feb 18, 2018 7:19:28 GMT -5
I see we're not ready to start. I'll wait.
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Post by jdd2 on Feb 18, 2018 7:40:26 GMT -5
Wait?
Why?
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Post by brucemacneill on Feb 18, 2018 7:51:16 GMT -5
Because the first step in addressing a problem is to determine the cause of the problem. Generally, that is done through root cause analysis which can't begin until the analysts forget about the solutions they have pre-determined.
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Post by brucemacneill on Feb 18, 2018 8:57:46 GMT -5
Perhaps incorrectly believing that this forum is a multi-disciplinary group I thought we could try.
There are 2 kinds of problems. Either something that should happen isn't happening or something is happening that shouldn't happen. One can start with either type of problem description and still arrive at a solution. This should be a discussion such as might happen over coffee and cigarettes rather than over beers. We'll need clear headed thinking. Someone just needs to define the problem.
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Post by AlanC on Feb 18, 2018 9:30:49 GMT -5
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 18, 2018 10:13:18 GMT -5
Perhaps incorrectly believing that this forum is a multi-disciplinary group I thought we could try. There are 2 kinds of problems. Either something that should happen isn't happening or something is happening that shouldn't happen. One can start with either type of problem description and still arrive at a solution. This should be a discussion such as might happen over coffee and cigarettes rather than over beers. We'll need clear headed thinking. Someone just needs to define the problem. Love the idea but I'd submit there's a third kind of problem, one's that can't be solved. I know I'm going to die someday. But all the sturm and drang in the world isn't going to prevent it. We've got gun control. We've got a fertile range of varying requirements in the grand experiment. Piss and moan all you want but it doesn't solve the problem.
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Post by brucemacneill on Feb 18, 2018 12:49:45 GMT -5
Perhaps incorrectly believing that this forum is a multi-disciplinary group I thought we could try. There are 2 kinds of problems. Either something that should happen isn't happening or something is happening that shouldn't happen. One can start with either type of problem description and still arrive at a solution. This should be a discussion such as might happen over coffee and cigarettes rather than over beers. We'll need clear headed thinking. Someone just needs to define the problem. Love the idea but I'd submit there's a third kind of problem, one's that can't be solved. I know I'm going to die someday. But all the sturm and drang in the world isn't going to prevent it. We've got gun control. We've got a fertile range of varying requirements in the grand experiment. Piss and moan all you want but it doesn't solve the problem. Well, I've come to the conclusion that when I die it's not my problem. Give it awhile.
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