Quote:
|
Originally Posted by roachboy
i think this is a straw man.
you could equally state the obvious---that "normal" is more a zone than a state and that anyone can snap, given an adequately dense adverse situation. which seems a far more sensible position than the one you outline, dk.
|
I don't see it as a straw man. I'm not saying that all people use that argument in debating against guns, but to simply declare that more people carrying guns is a direct factor in escalations of gun violence and NOT say that 'guns are evil' (which is a really ridiculous viewpoint) is basically saying that people in general are what I said before. The reason I don't see it as a strawman is i've seen many people say that exact thing, some even on this board.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by roachboy
your argument above is a straight reversal of claims that in other contexts i have criticized you for implicitly making--that guns are magical objects the possession of which makes you politically free--which, pushed a little, imputes agency to an inanimate object. so it is curious to me that you would reject that interpretation in one set of contexts and embrace its mirror image in another.
|
Then you're really not seeing my viewpoint on what I think guns truly are. They are a tool for defense. They can be an equalizer, when the law abiding aren't restricted from being equal to government forces. At no time do I think I ever intimated that a gun makes anyone an unstoppable force for anything.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by roachboy
the problem with the argument i make above is simply that the question it raises devolves onto another--the relative liklihood of such situations occurring. it seems to me there is no way to know that. so then the question would shift onto the point i raised in the earlier post.
|
Every time that the subject of guns comes up, i'm always hearing hypotheticals of 'a teacher could shoot a student in anger' or 'a student could mug the teacher for the gun'. These hypotheticals are indeed possible, but I have to wonder of these people that make these claims ever consider that students already bring guns to school and start shooting, so it seems that those who argue this position, while not ok with a shooter having completely defenseless targets to shoot until cops get there some minutes later, find that far more preferable to the possibility that someone could 'snap'. I don't understand that 'logic'.
