12-24-2008, 06:45 PM
Bob, you're wrong.
First, you are asking the wrong person for this question. There are places to play this ill-conceived question, and I'm not it. Mostly your posts are sensible and well thought out. This one isn't it. I spent my formative years as the son of an funeral director in a small town, and I know more about death than most everyone on this web page combined. I don't think that's a boast. I've probably personally buried more people than you know by some measure. It is a perspective that I carry, and I have no apologies about it, as I know personally denial is the central fact, the central coping mechanism of human existence. Knowing this, first hand--denial, unfortunately, is hard for me, personally, to achieve. This generates my perspective.
Guns are a non issue. If you want to get worked up, look at the sugar cookie in your hand.
You are asking a question as absurd as if I heard a skill saw go off, one, twice, three times and no board was cut if I felt I had personal ownership of whether some "skill saw murderer" existed. Uh, no. Not all crimes involve sound, Bob. Or context. My dad buried a series of girls murdered by sodomy with an air compressor. This, is horrid, I can tell you, and I will spare you the details of what a young lady turned zeppelin looks like. Still, I don't call the cops every time I hear air. Should you call the police every time you hear--hssssssssss?
One in 40 people die in car crashes. Do I freak out when someone is an hour late from a grocery store? No, actually, I don't, as I know, personally and viscerally, there is nothing I can do about it.
There were 150 fatal car crashes on the big island last year. Please forgive me, this is a quote from memory. If I remember right, near a 100 of those were due to drinking. How many shootings were there? How about this--how many fatal accidental shootings were there? 1? I don't know, it isn't many if any. There probably isnt a single one. If anyone wants to be reasonable, call the cops every time you see a car go by. If anyone wants to exercise the phone, here's a place to start. Even if you made a call every time a car went by, unselectively, you'd likely convict more people of crimes than you would calling in people shooting rats. And you certainly would prevent more deaths.
If you're concerned in a real manner about children, keep them away from churches and freaky parents. 1 in 3 kids is abused. Injuries with firearms are 4 orders of magnitude more rare. 4 orders of magnitude is a LOT.
I have become very exhausted with the topic. I have come to a state where I have lost confidence in which anyone is really interested in working toward sensible solutions. This is becoming a bit of a mantra for me, but you can count my attitude is indeed sincere. I'm interested soley in knowing the solution to the question, and that's it. I feel quite alone in that. I've asked a dozen of honest probing questions that have gone unanswered, and I've made a lot of attempts to answer those posed of me.
So what your question comes down to is a straw man argument again. Do I believe that a single gunshot indicates a crime? No, and hell no. Any more than when my planer is going off, does any one have the right to think I'm stuffing children through it. Here the problem. Some think a firearm is a sensible tool. Some think, irrationally, it is a object exclusively and solely used for violence or something irresponsible. This perspective is a complete fallacy. Until we can agree that there might sctually be, somewhere, at some time, a sensible place for the use of the tool called a "firearm" in our culture this whole argument, again, is crushed by the zealots. Otherwise, senseless dogma wins yet again.
First, you are asking the wrong person for this question. There are places to play this ill-conceived question, and I'm not it. Mostly your posts are sensible and well thought out. This one isn't it. I spent my formative years as the son of an funeral director in a small town, and I know more about death than most everyone on this web page combined. I don't think that's a boast. I've probably personally buried more people than you know by some measure. It is a perspective that I carry, and I have no apologies about it, as I know personally denial is the central fact, the central coping mechanism of human existence. Knowing this, first hand--denial, unfortunately, is hard for me, personally, to achieve. This generates my perspective.
Guns are a non issue. If you want to get worked up, look at the sugar cookie in your hand.
You are asking a question as absurd as if I heard a skill saw go off, one, twice, three times and no board was cut if I felt I had personal ownership of whether some "skill saw murderer" existed. Uh, no. Not all crimes involve sound, Bob. Or context. My dad buried a series of girls murdered by sodomy with an air compressor. This, is horrid, I can tell you, and I will spare you the details of what a young lady turned zeppelin looks like. Still, I don't call the cops every time I hear air. Should you call the police every time you hear--hssssssssss?
One in 40 people die in car crashes. Do I freak out when someone is an hour late from a grocery store? No, actually, I don't, as I know, personally and viscerally, there is nothing I can do about it.
There were 150 fatal car crashes on the big island last year. Please forgive me, this is a quote from memory. If I remember right, near a 100 of those were due to drinking. How many shootings were there? How about this--how many fatal accidental shootings were there? 1? I don't know, it isn't many if any. There probably isnt a single one. If anyone wants to be reasonable, call the cops every time you see a car go by. If anyone wants to exercise the phone, here's a place to start. Even if you made a call every time a car went by, unselectively, you'd likely convict more people of crimes than you would calling in people shooting rats. And you certainly would prevent more deaths.
If you're concerned in a real manner about children, keep them away from churches and freaky parents. 1 in 3 kids is abused. Injuries with firearms are 4 orders of magnitude more rare. 4 orders of magnitude is a LOT.
I have become very exhausted with the topic. I have come to a state where I have lost confidence in which anyone is really interested in working toward sensible solutions. This is becoming a bit of a mantra for me, but you can count my attitude is indeed sincere. I'm interested soley in knowing the solution to the question, and that's it. I feel quite alone in that. I've asked a dozen of honest probing questions that have gone unanswered, and I've made a lot of attempts to answer those posed of me.
So what your question comes down to is a straw man argument again. Do I believe that a single gunshot indicates a crime? No, and hell no. Any more than when my planer is going off, does any one have the right to think I'm stuffing children through it. Here the problem. Some think a firearm is a sensible tool. Some think, irrationally, it is a object exclusively and solely used for violence or something irresponsible. This perspective is a complete fallacy. Until we can agree that there might sctually be, somewhere, at some time, a sensible place for the use of the tool called a "firearm" in our culture this whole argument, again, is crushed by the zealots. Otherwise, senseless dogma wins yet again.