And that's really turned out to be the main point I suppose. My original point is pretty damn non-controversial, yet there we went! and here we continue to go!
As far as I can tell, your point(s) are meant to be that, while you understand that the first principle of gun safety is to always assume that a weapon is loaded:
1) You can postulate certain hypothetical situations where a weapon is reliably known, as a parameter of your hypothetical, to be unloaded. Failure to agree with you that this has some relevance to actual gun safety, as practiced in the real world, is indicative of an irrational fear of firearms.
2) There is an important difference between believing something to be true and being firmly convinced that something is true. It is apparently impossible, at least in certain cases, known to include, at minimum, those where truth or falsehood is "far too easy a thing to test, and...far too important to be treated casually", to be firmly convinced of something that is not actually true.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
Rat, actually.
And yes, I'm apparently irrational for not accepting your premise that we should assume actions not in evidence based on 'common sense.'
Nonono you've got it all wrong Adam. It was all troll from the start. You know, to demonstrate how other people are incapable of having genuine, adult discussion. Because that is what genuine adults do.
Nonono you've got it all wrong Adam. It was all troll from the start. You know, to demonstrate how other people are incapable of having genuine, adult discussion. Because that is what genuine adults do.
What is "genuine adult"? Is that an etiquette that you get when you are capable of ejaculating while shitting on the toilet, reciting the old Testament in Braille to an audience of concerned old ladies? With schraubringglasses on the nose? Because that's what everyone wants, right? There is always stuff like that in the news. More, More better, even more amazing.
Dickshitters. They are afraid of death, that's all.
Rat, actually.
And yes, I'm apparently irrational for not accepting your premise that we should assume actions not in evidence based on 'common sense.'
I can find you an adult literacy program near-by. They can help you ...
They want to help you.
Really.
They do.
--
Why are you even bothering to pretend you're in an actual exchange of words and ideas with anyone else though? You've plainly got it all sealed up yourself. I guess it makes sense though--if you just talk to yourself openly and the wrong people get word they may haul you off to the rubber hotel room.
...it is dangerous to let a nuclear reactor be built and run by a 6 year old...
You hysterical liberals and your nanny state regulatory regimes.
Toledo Edison/FirstEnergy tried that awhile back not far from where I used to live. Okay, so the people who ran Davis-Besse weren't actual, literal six-year-olds, but the functional equivalence was nothing short of breathtaking.
Point is, if the nanny state regulators hadn't stepped in and the Market were allowed to run its course, a coolant loss accident may well have killed enough of Edison's customers to have a substantial effect on its revenues. That would have been more than enough "punishment" in a truly free society.
As always, the Invisible Hand giveth, the Invisible Hand taketh away, and the Invisible Hand puncheth the Invisible Clown as reactor heads slowly melt away unnoticed. It is the natural order of things, and we fuck with the natural order at our peril.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
It's a functional and quite arguably healthy fear, but that doesn't mean it's rational.
I think that functional and healthy is a pretty good definition of a rational fear.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
It's a functional and quite arguably healthy fear, but that doesn't mean it's rational.
I think that functional and healthy is a pretty good definition of a rational fear.
Unlikely. It's just convenient, just like believers "buying into" religious apologetics. They feel affirmed, they don't really buy the bullshit. It becomes quite clear when you apply the same bullshit to another equation they don't like so much. Suddenly they're not so convinced by the same argument. Same thing here, speaking generally, though I suppose some could be pretty completely ignorant of how clear and simple a thing it is to check to see if a gun is loaded or not--seems a stretch, but such striking ignorance rarely seems to slow down the emotionally invested opiner.
Mysophobia can certainly be functional and healthy, but it's still not rational in such cases. It's not hard to recognize many phobias on the list linked below as healthy and functional (unless of course you're too invested in the contrary ideological apologetic), but even when they are, they're still not rational. This really isn't rocket surgery.
It never seems to fail, sadly ... many of my fellow liberals reveal their Dark Side, their inner fundamentalist wingnut, when the discussion turns to guns (and the discussion quickly breaks down).
That was drilled into me from the very first time I ever held a firearm: always, always, always assume that a firearm is loaded -- no matter how thoroughly you think you've checked to ensure that it isn't.
Consequently, Rule #2 was: Never, ever point a gun at anything -- no matter how sure you are that the gun is unloaded -- unless you're prepared to shoot that thing.
Yup. My training as well. Never suggested anything different, nor anything to suggest I'm not fully aware of basic gun safety, nor anything to suggest I have any issue with gun safety. Quite the contrary in fact.
As I've pointed out in pretty much every post on this, I don't advocate testing my argument, which itself isn't rational but rather more about indoctrination. But behaving based upon indoctrination, even when benevolent and healthy, isn't rational.
The fact everyone is having such issues with the actual point is demonstrating I'm right at every step. So far everyone is either blatantly misrepresenting my point, ignoring the most important premise, or defending the idea that it's entirely rational to fear a gun that has been carefully proven to be as harmless as a paperweight. That's defending indoctrination that runs counter to evidence.
That's an awfully broad statement. I, for instance, wasn't even addressing you. I simply replied to the point that "Always assume a firearm is loaded" is the first rule of gun safety. This was what I was taught as well.
It's not an irrational thing to teach. The point is to get people into the habit of always being careful when handling a gun, and to avoid pointing a gun at someone. Because accidents happen, and deliberately inculcating habits that will reduce the likelihood of such accidents is a good idea.
In much the same way, I was taught to always assume, when working on a car, that the emergency brake was off or non-functional, and that the battery was connected -- no matter how thoroughly you think you've checked these things. It's a question of instilling good habits, and so reducing the likelihood of accidents; it's not that we thought the car was going to magically start itself and run us over.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
If a fear is functional it serves a purpose. A healthy fear, presumably, is a fear that in some way serves the purpose of preserving the organism's health. Now, it seems to me that if a fear serves a useful function (such as preserving health) then it is rational to entertain that fear.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
That ["So far everyone is either blatantly misrepresenting my point, ignoring the most important premise, or defending the idea that it's entirely rational to fear a gun that has been carefully proven to be as harmless as a paperweight" is] an awfully broad statement. I, for instance, wasn't even addressing you.
You've joined in a dog-pile on the side of the dogs, Michael. Don't you think you have a responsibility to check that your response does speak to the issue being piled upon before contributing? Otherwise you are in danger of just adding to the confusion and helping the dogs to stifle someone's idea.
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... it's just an idea
Last edited by mickthinks; 05-04-2013 at 08:24 AM.
If a fear is functional it serves a purpose. A healthy fear, presumably, is a fear that in some way serves the purpose of preserving the organism's health. Now, it seems to me that if a fear serves a useful function (such as preserving health) then it is rational to entertain that fear.
That argument would only persuade someone who believes that every response prompted by an emotion that sometimes produces useful behaviour, is rational. I don't believe that, and I'll be surprised if you do, Ang.
Poll shows 29% of 863 Americans polled think armed revolt "to protect liberties" will be necessary in the next few years. I'm not sure which disturbs me more, that 44% of Republicans think that or that 18% of Democrats think that too. Holy fuck, people, that's nearly as many as actively fought the British during the American Revolutionary war.
On with the stupid: the same polls shows 25% think Americans are being lied to by the government about the Sandy Hook shooting for political purposes. I think that's true too, but not in the way most do. I think the vast majority of the lies are coming from those in the "news entertainment" media espousing conspiracy theories about it.
Paranoid delusional Iraq War veteran discharged in 2007 for political activities while in uniform cum Teabagger talk radio host wants to hold a thousand open-carry march in D.C.
Quote:
Originally Posted by announcement
On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.
HOUSTON -- Shots fired near a ticket counter left one man dead and created a scare this afternoon at Houston's busy George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
[...]
The incident comes as many passengers are arriving for the National Rifle Association's annual convention, which is being held in Houston from Friday through Sunday.
There's not a country in the world where 'civil disobedience with loaded firearms' would not be considered open rebellion and/or treason.
No, you just have to look civilized while you do it, and the civilians in the neighborhood return to sorting their garbage again. Otherwise, there's always pockets of resistance.
Or perhaps you just need to be unwilling to bet your life on your own infallibility.
Better stop driving a car, then.
Or riding in one: you're trusting someone else to not make mistakes.
Indeed: you are just as dead when you stab yourself to death with a butter-knife. So we might as well keep our assault-rifles in the kitchen drawer.
Is it possible to talk about guns without using absurd arguments? Or to reply to my actual point?
Tell me, which causes a greater number of casualties each year:
Automobile accidents (hell, not even DUI related, just from inattention or other human-error) or accidental gun deaths?
That's right, automobile accidents.
If you don't see that cars are more dangerous than most guns, you must not have been paying attention in physics class.
Plug in the mass of a car and its speed into the kinetic energy equation and get frightened at just how much "kill you" is bound up there. Assuming you even know what joules are.
If you've never been a pedestrian on a crosswalk and had to jump out of the way of an incompetent driver that almost ran you over, like I had to do, then perhaps it's understandable why you're not respectful of cars.
Re: I think we need a morons with guns thrad
Rat, actually.
You hysterical liberals and your nanny state regulatory regimes.
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