Cute:
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Originally posted by ctembreull
I've tried to trim your post down to get rid of the ad-hominem argumenta, and a bit of the techno-weenie stuff. I recognize that you are far, far, far more conversant with guns than I will ever care to be, but I'm sure you'll pardon me when I say that that doesn't make me feel any more secure. Much less so, actually.
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What ad-hominem? I called your opinion ignorant, as it is obvious you don't know much about the subject you are speaking to. As far as the "techno-weenie stuff", you are the one who brought up the technical aspects of firearms in
your post. I didn't realize that you were using them without knowing what they meant. From now on I will exclude such details from my arguments.
The sad irony of the situation is that while you may not feel safer, the presence of competant, armed, law-abiding citizens in this country actually makes you much safer. Every criminal who will ever size you up will do so under the assumption that you may have a gun. You're welcome.
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I think I see the crux of your argument here: so long as guns are legal in any form, you appear willing to concede that a non-trivial number of gun deaths will occur in the United States every year. This is, apparently, where we diverge: you're quite willing to frame the debate in terms of a gun duel, which presumes that one or more participants will wind up dead or wounded. I would much rather frame the debate in terms of finding a way to prevent such situations and to, with any luck, minimize or eliminate gun accidents and homicides in America. It's as simple as that. I want to try to fix a badly broken system; you want to talk about things like muzzle velocity and the relative merits of this gun over that gun.
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No, I have come to terms with the reality that there will always be guns available to the criminal element in this country, and have seen the folly of passing laws that restrict only those people who follow laws in the first place (generally not the type killing people with guns).
Yes, so long as there are guns, there will be deaths. The same goes for knives, lawn-darts, cars, and shampoo.
And also,
you were the one discussing the relative merits of one gun over another by arbitrarily labeling one of them an "assault weapon". I was simply pointing out the folly of such logic.
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(... a point dodging the issue of technology versus gun laws).
You don't, apparently, see what I'm getting at. Just because people have come up with a way to make handguns fire rifle ammunition, or that such-and-such a gun requires such-and-such an ammo, it does not automatically follow that said gun should be legal. Again, there's the "more power than you'd ever need" aspect, which has a lot to do with this.
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No, what you are trying to say, in a round about way, is that we should ban all guns. Period. You see, your definition of what is dangerous includes every gun I have ever seen. I was trying to explain that to you, I apologize if I got lost in minutia.
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You like quibbling with my definition, I see. That's fine, but you've managed to completely miss the forest whilst you were counting trees. But, for your information, no - all the conditions need not apply. If a gun has a thirty-round clip loaded with Teflon rounds, I don't see how the size of those rounds matters. It's the people who are probably about to die because of that gun that matter.
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I was simply trying to allay your irrational fear of firearms using humour. I find it funny that my target pistol is suddenly such a dangerously out of control device that I am likely to go out and start mowing down the innocent masses with it.
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Well, actually, it *is* an alternate definition to my own. And I don't recall ever calling it your opinion...
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I'm so glad you have an opinion, but I think perhaps you shouldn't be quite so quick to call other folks' opinions irrelevant.
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And as for the definition, yours would be the alternate. You see, the term assault weapon carrys legal weight, therefor the term is defined in balck and white. If you are going to discuss gun control and banter around technical terms, make sure you know the meaning.
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In your hands, I'd probably say any gun is an assault weapon. You'll pardon me for saying so, but without looking at your profile, you strike me as a high-schooler. You're very fond of guns, I see that, and you're always very happy to talk about them, much in the fashion that other high-schoolers do about cars or other things.
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Not even close, though I am very fond of guns. I make my living with them, you see. And you buy them for me.
[quote][b] All technical, with no thought given to the actual impact of what you're saying. You can argue the technical all you like. I don't think I'll be listening too closely: technospeak outside my own professional field tends to bore me intensely. I would rather be
fixing the problem.
Yet you have proposed no feasible way to fix "it". Your methodology is akin to waving a magic wand and making all the bad, evil guns just dissappear. Not gonna happen. I have addressed the technospeak issue, If you don't like it, don't bring it up.
You are most welcome.