Quote of the Day

I may have run this one before, but it's pretty right on for the US's cult of ignorance:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

And before your make stupid comments about ME being the ignorant one:  remember that one is not really allowed to give legal advice unless one is a member of the bar.  In fact, it is against the law to put oneself out as a lawyer or engage in the unqualified practise of law.

On the other hand, I have on more than one occasion shown that you have taken things out of context from legal decisions.

But, you know more about the law than I do.

When ignorance is a virtue...

I guess you would hate taxes if you admire ignorance and consider it to be a civic virtue:

Quote of the day:

The thing is, shameless lying and ignorance works surprisingly well as a debate tactic. It’s hard to argue with someone who not only has signaled that he doesn’t care what the truth is but is downright proud of how little he actually knows. Such a person is not amenable to being educated. Once the pretense of really caring one way or another about what is right and what is wrong has been abandoned, all avenue of discourse is shut down.

Source

The Gun Violence Debate in the US runs on ignorance

I've already mentioned that the federal funding for gun violence research has been cut since the facts have an "anti-gun" bias and the Tiahrt Amendment protects the  illegal firearms trade, which means that the debate has been running on literal science fiction (not to mention the work of Lott and Kleck which is figurative science fiction).  "Fat Tony" Scalia produced a judicial "opinion" that was pure sophistry hiding ignorance of the facts.

The real point here is that even statistics are suffering in this battle to stack the deck.  Thus, The National Rifle Association likes to argue that criminals, or people intent on committing a crime, will obtain guns no matter what the law says. Among the 5,417 gun homicides in 2012 that the FBI assigns a circumstance to (3,438 are "unknown circumstances"), a mere 1,324 were committed in conjunction with another felony. Three times that (3,980) were committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens. Of that, over half (1,968) were the result of an argument that escalated fatally out of control.

To put it another way: otherwise unpremeditated murders, where people kill out of momentary rage, are the single most common type of gun homicide in America. More than gangland killings (822); more than murders committed during robberies (505) and drug deals (311) combined.

But, are the data which is coming from official sources even accurate in this matter?  Slate magazine tried to find out the facts, but like concrete data as to how many concealed carry permit holders actually go bad and who REALLY relies on the "get away with murder" laws, anything that has to be turned up needs to be done manually.

The feature was meant to be a provocation of sorts: We knew that those rows of figures, each one attached to a name, piling atop one another every day, made for an arresting visual, one that might trouble even the most ardent gun-rights supporter.

But as time went by and the interactive was discussed, questioned, and cited, this provocation also became a kind of experiment. How many deaths were being reported on, and how many were falling through the cracks? Why was it that no single source was collecting this data in real time? In other words, we wanted to know if an interactive like this can actually be valuable as something besides a provocation—whether crowdsourcing can produce real-time data and whether that data is useful and complete. (Hoping people might use our data for their own research purposes, we made it available as a downloadable file.)

A year after Newtown, the 11,400-plus human figures on that list remain a chilling reminder of the toll guns take on Americans every day. And the answers to our questions have started to become clear. Some people did use our data, for both interesting visualizations and public programs (sometimes, alas, without reading it carefully first). But we’ve also learned some tough lessons about how hard it is to track death by gun in America. The overwhelming likelihood is that our interactive missed more than half of the gun deaths in the past 12 months. The main reason there is no single source collecting this data in real time is surely because it is an enormous, daunting task—one that we only made a small dent in, with the help of devoted volunteers.

The statistics which are slowly, painstakingly assembled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from death certificates, find that about 32,000 people are killed by guns in America each year.  Unfortunately, the CDC's data in addition to possibly being incomplete is not published in a timely fashion.  For example, the most recent year for which preliminary data is available is 2011 and the CDC's "exact" number was 32,163. Slate also found that some gun deaths fell through the cracks.  Additionally, Slate used everyone who was killed by a gun (e.g. Tamerlan Tsarnaev), which caused an uproar from the right.

Slate also found that:

Suicides, it turns out, are this project’s enormous blind spot. Most every homicide makes the local paper, even if in large cities these stories are sometimes relegated to a mere news brief. Accidental shootings are usually reported upon, as are shootings by law enforcement and incidents in which civilians kill in self-defense. But suicides are mostly invisible. And the fact is that suicides make up 60 percent or more of all deaths by gun in America. In our interactive, misleadingly, only about 10 percent of recorded deaths were deemed suicides by our crowdsourced categorizers.

Slate has a companion piece to this The Missing 20,000 Gun Deaths. Suicide accounts for the bulk of gun deaths, which is a fact I know annoys you greatly.   On the other hand, the data also shows that owning a firearm is far more dangerous to the owner.

Ultimately, the lack of information filters down to researchers. Though most scientists Slate talked to said that they’d always found individual police departments forthcoming and helpful.  There is widespread frustration that data isn’t systematically available in a more timely manner for people doing the research. “I don’t know why we don’t have rapid case accounts,” said Harvard’s Cathy Barber. “It’s crazy that we are using 2010 data.”

The real bottom line is that we cannot have a serious discussion about this topic without accurate information.  The information which has been fueling the debate is pretty much wrong whether it is that the Second Amendment relates to private arms or studies that show more guns is the reason there is less crime.  Indeed, it doesn't help your side of the argument if the "facts" you provide are bullshit, or just plain non-existent.

It's time the debate started using facts rather than wishful thinking.

Ignorance is the gunloon state of mind

Ignorance is a state of not knowing, a state of being uninformed and unaware.

You can be incredibly intelligent, yet you can still be ignorant. Ignorance is distinguished from stupidity, although both can lead to "unwise" acts.

Writer Thomas Pynchon articulated about the scope and structure of one's ignorance: "Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person's mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to [the advice of] writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the possibilities therein for writing a good story."

There is also Willful delusion. That is a state where matters which are obvious are sometimes ignored, not taken into consideration. This phenomenon is not limited to ordinary persons without native ability but extends to the highest level of human governance resulting in nightmarish scenarios that could, with more wisdom, have been avoided. In fact, the term Ignoramus is sometimes used for someone who is willfully ignorant.

But the reason I mention this, is that I find when I deal with gunloons, I can show them passages which in which it is quite obvious that it supports my position, not theirs, where they will deny this.

In fact, they can even raise points that contradict their positions, yet they do not acknowledge this. It's weird how they can see or say things which contradict their position, yet still hold onto them for dear life.

Personally, I would prefer something substantive in the way of criticism rather than the fallacious arguments; in particular, the use of personal information--especially imagined personal information. Such attempts to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it. That is a a logical fallacy, or more precisely an informal fallacy and an irrelevance to the argument.

But, I find that the gunloon argument is based upon fallacies, fiction (in particular Science fiction "an armed society is a polite society"), half-quotations, and just general historic misrepresentation. In fact, the gun rights concept is a good example of believing in the concept of just wanting to believe that one believes rather than actually believing in anything real.

Ultimately, I can provide far more facts than they do, yet they will choose not to believe it. Science has shown that a part of the brain, the amygdala, helps to keep one ignorant. The amygdala is responsible for the body's fight or flight response, setting off a chain of biological changes that prepare the body to respond to danger well before the brain is conscious of any threat. It's reactions will resist any information that conflicts with deeply held beliefs.

There is another thing, some people also justify their beliefs against any arguments to the contrary. Behavioural economist Dan Ariely says the assumption made by most economists that people behave rationally, balancing the costs and benefits of different courses of action, is simply wrong Ariely is the Duke University professor who wrote “Predictably Irrational,” a look at how irrational behavior bends our lives in predictable ways. Ariely explains that expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

Even sadder is the fact that these people will ignore experts and people with better knowledge of a topic merely because it conflicts with their deeply held beliefs. Expertise and knowledge is seen as elitism, while ignorance that reinforces ignorance is seen as a virtue.

So, while there are some who hope to conquer ignorance with truth. I think the reality is that it is hard to persuade people who are seriously stuck in their beliefs. The sad thing is that they can be incredibly intelligent, yet they can also be woefully ignorant.

And Here is WHY so very many people think Texans like this are crazy, and dangerous...like 'W'

(larger type, emphasis mine - DG) from MSNBC.com
Once again, a lack of education in history, including Texas history; there have been plenty of riots in Texas over the years.  None of them seem to be resolved positively by shootings.

An older example:http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70E12FF355D1A728DDDA90B94D1405B818CF1D3

And a more recent example, also including property damage and fire:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/01/texas.prison.riot/

An overview, of sorts, is here:
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jcr02
which includes these paragraphs, although it clearly doesn't cove the second half of the 20th century, or the first decade of the 21st century :

"The most common cause of riots in the first half of the twentieth century was public outrage toward prisoners. Mob threats of violence to prisoners necessitated the use of state troops on four occasions in 1900. In 1901 three lynchings by mobs took place despite the calling of state troops; in two instances the troops suppressed the mobs. At Brenham rioting broke out over the employment of a black brakeman by a railway; it was suppressed after two days. In 1902 mob violence brought on the use of state troops three times. In one instance the mob hanged a prisoner before the troops' arrival. Troops were called out three times on this account in 1903, twice in 1904, three times in 1905, and once in 1906. The Brownsville Raid^qv (1906) precipitated a serious race riot involving black soldiers. Troops were needed elsewhere in 1907 and 1908; in the latter year rioting at Slocum resulted in the killing of more than ten blacks. Other mob actions in the first decade of the century resulted from strikes at Houston in 1904 and racial tension at Ragley the same year. Riots also took place in San Antonio and Fort Worth in April and May of 1913. The Houston Riot of 1917 was started by about 150 black troops from Camp Logan, a temporary training center near the city. The riot, touched off by the arrest of a black woman, was the culmination of general uneasiness and hostility following the establishment of the camp. It resulted in the deaths of seventeen people, mostly whites; the anger of an aroused white population necessitated martial law for four days. The Longview Race Riot of 1919 also resulted in the proclamation of martial law. A strike at Galveston in 1920 produced lawlessness that required the help of the Texas National Guard. Mexia was declared in a state of anarchy because of a riot and was placed under martial law from January to March 1922. The Sherman Riot of 1930 stemmed from the arrest of a black who had assaulted a white woman; rangers were called to protect the prisoner, but a mob set fire to the courthouse and virtually seized control of the town. When troops of the Texas National Guard arrived, they were attacked by the mob, and before martial law restored order, a number of buildings were destroyed. Enforcement of oil-conservation laws in the 1930s also necessitated the use of the National Guard to suppress mob lawlessness.
The guard was also called in September 1937 to suppress mob violence at Marshall and again to quell the Beaumont Riot of 1943. In Beaumont a white mob, outraged at the assault of a white woman by a black, terrorized the black section of town. Two died and 100 homes were destroyed. In 1955 the National Guard was used to control a riot at Rusk State Hospital. In May 1967 a riot that occurred among black students at Texas Southern University in Houston resulted in the death of one policeman and the wounding of two students and two police officers. Though the immediate cause of the riot was the arrest of a student, the night-long incident was related to general racial tension. "

Both massive property damage - as in the example of the destruction of 100 homes - and racial tension appear to be factors in common with the UK rioting and the history of riots in Texas. 

It wouldn't surprise me if the other people in the room when this woman spoke up actually had a better grasp of Texas history than this dim bulb, in spite of being, presumably, mostly citizens of the UK.

Where are the guns? A Texan's take on the UK riots

Daniel Deme / EPA

Police officers patrol the streets of Camden, in north London, on Monday. An extra 10,000 officers were brought in from other parts of the country to help to quell rioting and looting that engulfed parts of the capital.

By Heather Lacy, NBC News assignment editor
LONDON - We’ve been on five-day roller-coaster here in the NBC News London bureau, what with riots and looting breaking out across the capital and the country.
We’re all wondering if the “criminality pure and simple,” as Prime Minister David Cameron put it, will pop up again, or if the uneasy calm we have now will hold.
Everyone in the newsroom has been discussing the recent violence, the worst this country has seen in three decades.  Why would people set fire to stores, cars and homes, looting, wounding, killing and destroying property as they go? Who could do this?  How did the police
fail to bring order for days?
As everyone in the newsroom debated the use of force – whether to use rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons, Tasers, even bean-bag guns –  I wondered why they were wasting their breath.
“If your cops had guns, day number 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this, it would NOT have happened!” I said at a recent meeting.
People stopped talking and looked at me.  A couple giggled. Those who know me weren’t too horrified, but others stared at me like I’d just drop-kicked a puppy.
Transplanted Texan
I’m a relatively recent London implant, having moved from Texas a few years back.  I’m surrounded mostly by Brits who are usually amused and occasionally appalled at some of my comments.
“In fact, why are we even talking about this?” I asked.  “A couple batons aren’t gonna do the trick when the rioters have Molotov cocktails, bricks and knifes, and they outnumber the police.”
When I first moved here I was surprised when I discovered that “bobbies on the beat” (cops on the street) don’t carry guns. Apparently, when the Metropolitan Police Service was founded they thought arming the officers would scare the public.  How quaint, I thought.
There is an armed contingent, the Authorised Firearms Officers, which makes up about a third of the Met’s numbers, but they don’t patrol routinely and are only called in when needed.   And getting a firearms certificate as a private citizen is very difficult, if not impossible, unless you live in the countryside.
Now, I’m not suggesting police just go out and start capping people carte blanche, but I can assure you those brave and defiant “hooded youths” (as they were described by many a British broadcaster) would not have been so brave or defiant if they had a lethal weapon pointed at them.
Yes, there’s an argument for unarmed police, and yes the British police do have an armed unit, but I’m not going to get into the minutiae. I just want to know, what’s so bad about a show of force in the form of a gun?
I mean, you don’t see anything like this kicking off in Texas, do you?

Yes.  You do. 
What an embarrassment that this person is in a news position, with such a bacground of ignorance.  Odds are she knows even less about the UK and their history, or world history generally, than what she knows of Texas.  The history of Texas is not the same as the myth of guns in Texas, or the myths of "Texas-style" law and order.