Saturday, December 31, 2011

It's all about "Freedom"

One of the main characteristics of propaganda is that it tries to bypass logic and use the emotions. That's because most of the arguments made by propaganda don't pass scrutiny, so they need to use something such as "freedom" which most people want.

On the other hand, what exactly is the "freedom" being proposed and how does that effect society?

In the case of the pro-gun viewpoint "Freedom" is the unfettered access to all sorts of deadly weapons by all sorts of people. To these people, incidents such as Gabriel Giffords only point out that "Freedom is not Free". It comes with a cost.

And the cost is to society in terms of money spent treating the victims of gun violence, prosecuting the perpetrators, and then incarcerating them--if they happened to have lived. There is also the cost to soceity from the effects of these shootings on families and communities.

The "gun rights" crowd like to cite the Second Amendment which clearly states that its purpose has something to do with "well-regulated militias":
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
When question comes to the truth of whether this deals with "gun rights" or the right to a Well-regulated militia, one needs to assess whether it makes sense that the intent was to see society plagued by the effects of gun violence?

or

This had something to do with how the nation was intended to be defended?

Doesn't the latter make far more sense?

So, the pro-gun crowd has to do everything to keep people from scrutinising their arguments since they blatantly fallacious and don't stand intellectual scrutiny. Scratch the surface and the issue behind the Second Amendment was a standing army v. the militia, not "gun rights".

Use your intellect, not your emotions. The pro-gun arguments are all propaganda that don't want you to stop and think.

18 comments:

  1. I'm not engaging in propaganda. There is a tension between the values of security and freedom. I favor one over the other, while your side chooses the opposite. Values must be aware of the facts, but they are not determined by facts.

    Besides which, crime rates of all types are falling in this country, so the facts that you choose to emphasize aren't really all that useful to you, either.

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  2. Explain why Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr had guns?
    Your militia nonsense belongs in the graveyard along with your un-American ideas.

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  3. I want both sides to think and discuss facts. I keep inviting the gun control side to:
    (1) state their specific goals
    (2) tell us what policies/laws we need to achieve those goals
    (3) tell us what they think will happen if we implement their policies/laws
    (4) tell us why those policies/laws will work
    (5) tell us how much it will cost in dollars to implement and enforce those laws

    Why is that so hard?

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  4. I can tell you my goals.

    First and foremost, I want to minimize violent crime to citizens of the U.S. I am also interested in reducing suicides as long as measures to reduce suicides don't cause citizens to suffer additional violent crimes. And I am interested in reducing criminal-to-criminal violent crime as long as measures to reduce criminal-to-criminal violent crime don't cause citizens to suffer additional violent crimes.

    Second, my goal is that citizens who desire to arm themselves for personal protection can do so. I do not want citizens armed against their will. I do not want criminals to be armed.

    Third, here are the measures for citizens who want to be armed:
    (1) Citizens who are of appropriate age (perhaps anywhere from 18 to 21?), who have no juvenile or adult violent misdemeanor or violent felony convictions, who are mentally healthy, who pass slightly more training than most states require now for concealed carry licenses, and who pass drug screenings can carry firearms openly or preferably concealed anywhere. Any government imposed expenses for licensure have to be "affordable" for almost anyone.
    (2) Armed citizens who do something "stupid" (e.g. leave their firearm available for a child who discharges it) lose their right to carry/possess firearms for 10 years minimum and likely forever depending on the severity of the "stupidity" -- in addition to any additional appropriate criminal charges.
    (3) Everyone registers all of their firearms and every sale requires the buyer to pass a background check.
    (4) Government cannot use registration information for mass confiscations.
    (5) Government cannot impose tons of qualifications that have the effect of making it next to impossible to carry or use a firearm in defense of citizens' lives.

    Until dog gone can find any documented instances -- much less hundreds of instances annually -- of armed citizens shooting bystanders, her concerns about all the hypothetical possibilities of armed citizens harming the public are just as irrelevant as concerns about space rocks hitting people in the head.

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  5. "(3) Everyone registers all of their firearms and every sale requires the buyer to pass a background check.
    (4) Government cannot use registration information for mass confiscations."

    You're kidding, right?

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  6. Capn Crunch,

    Registration seems pointless if confiscation isn't the goal, but otherwise, I'm with you. Good luck seeing Dog Gone or others answer your questions.

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  7. Capn Crunch, Maybe you've joined us too recently to be aware of the following posts. But, aren't we talking about those things continually anyway? Aren't we answering those questions every day?

    http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-official-goal.html

    http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2011/09/solution.html

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  8. Wow, cap'n crunch really outed himself as an anti.

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  9. Sorry, Mikeb302000, but you don't get a pass on this one. You didn't answer all of Capn Crunch's questions. Four and five--cost and effectiveness--are left to our imaginations, I suppose. To me, that's because you know that your ideas won't solve gun violence. They will only disarm good people.

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  10. MAgunowner wrote,
    "Wow, cap'n crunch really outed himself as an anti."

    I don't see myself being anti-gun rights at all. In that same post I stated that registrations could not be used for mass confiscations. And I stated that people who are "clean" should be able to carry everywhere. In a previous post I wrote that I wanted a Constitutional Amendment stating that registrations could not be used for mass confiscations.

    The only reason I favor registration is to help reduce the flow of firearms to people who have criminal backgrounds and would fail a background check when trying to purchase one from a dealer. I don't think for a moment that registration would significantly reduce the supply of firearms for criminals. My thought is that it would be worthwhile if the cost was nominal and it stopped even a few hundred firearms going into the hands of criminals every year.

    Heck, if it makes people feel better, have the NRA be the entity that keeps the registration database. Law enforcement can query the NRA for the owner of a serial number as part of any criminal investigation they want. If all they can do is submit serial numbers here and there, government would never be able to suck away everyone's firearms.

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  11. I didn't think the Capn was an anti. I just thought he's a bit more reasonable than the average pro-gun guy who comments here.

    Greg, as far as not going far enough in answering the Capn's questions for you, bullshit. You refuse to use the slightest bit of common sense and honesty. Without those tow elements, convincing you of anything is impossible.

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  12. Once the universal gun registry exists, it's one legislative act to repeal your provision that it can't be used for confiscation.

    If the cost was nominal? Do you have any idea how expensive it is to create and maintain datasets of scores of millions of guns? The time involved to process registrations? Ask Canada how it went for them.

    You are a naive Fudd or a sockpuppet of MikeB.

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  13. Let's look at it this way. The primary reason that I am armed is in case a criminal tries to harm me or my family. If a few "legal" gun dealers and "legal" firearm owners are supplying several hundred or several thousand guns a year to criminals, it is in my own best interest to reduce it ... and it is in the best interest of unarmed citizens to reduce it.

    I can see only two possible down sides to registration:
    (1) Government uses it to disarm masses of law-abiding citizens -- with or without monetary compensation.
    (2) Government imposes ridiculous fees on or unnecessarily complicates the registry system in an effort to discourage firearm ownership.

    The solution is simple and inexpensive. A registry database on servers with high capacity connections to the Internet should cost less than $1 million annually including maintenance. The only information necessary in the database is the serial number of the firearm, the caliber, the manufacturer, the seller, the buyer, and an authentication number from the background check (NCIS) system.

    Using such a system takes almost no time at all. In fact such a system already exists in my state. When I want to purchase a handgun for example, it takes all of 5 minutes to fill out the information for the handgun registry and call in a background check. Then I pay for it and walk out the door.

    And such a system could actually be a cost save. The cost to investigate, prosecute, and imprison convicted criminals is significant. Let's say the average cost just to investigate and prosecute a criminal is $20,000. (I have no basis for that other than it seems reasonable.) If the system prevented 50 criminals per year from assaulting or murdering someone, it would be a cost save. And when you throw in the cost of housing someone in prison, which costs several thousands of dollars per year, it would involve even fewer people to be a cost save.

    Of course this assumes that those criminals that would have acquired and used their firearms for violent crime would not simply use knives or clubs or something in place of firearms. And that may be a poor assumption.

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  14. MAgunowner:

    I submitted my last post before seeing your last post. I understand that one legislative act could enable government to use the registry to disarm the masses. That is why I favor a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting that action.

    As for the cost to have such a registry, I believe it is insignificant and could be a cost save like I said. I will admit that I did not think about the cost of initially entering the existing data into the database. Even that could be nominal. It should be trivial to pay an expert to import an existing database (like my state's handgun registry) into a national registry.

    We could also do the "going forward" thing. Simply require all new acquisitions to be in the database. There would be no cost (other than the already stated annual maintenance costs) to do that.

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  15. Mikeb302000,

    You're starting to sound like some others on this site. I am always honest in my comments here, despite Democommie's moaning. As for common sense, that's a matter of debate, but people use that term far too often. Generally, what I think is common sense, and what you think is wrong. That's how it goes in many arguments. But just because I disagree with you or others here doesn't mean that I can't think correctly.

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  16. "The only reason I favor registration is to help reduce the flow of firearms to people who have criminal backgrounds and would fail a background check when trying to purchase one from a dealer. I don't think for a moment that registration would significantly reduce the supply of firearms for criminals."

    Do you realize how ridiculous you sound? You want registration in order to reduce the flow of guns to criminals, even though registration won't reduce the flow of guns to criminals.

    Come on, you're fucking with us, right?

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  17. No, Greg, we often come upon a sticking point in your defense which fails the common-sense test. Next time I see one I'll be sure to point it out to you.

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  18. Mikeb302000,

    Just tossing about the phrase, common sense, isn't enough. You have to show how my thinking is wrong, not how it merely disagrees with yours.

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